


The Young Men Carbuncular

by PlaidAdder



Series: Wild About Harry [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Androgyny, Butch/Femme, Car Chases, Case Fic, Drug Use, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, F/F, F/M, M/M, Morning After, Murder, Poison, Riding Crop, Teamwork, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, adventure of the blanched soldier, basically a lot of things I would otherwise tag are spoilers, bungling, can't tag that it's a spoiler too, can't tag this it's a spoiler, it's a waste land out there, plot aplenty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 106,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after John and Sherlock's party is full of surprises. Harry finds a priceless blue gemstone in the entrails of a chicken. John and Sherlock find themselves on the trail of something more sinister than a jewel theft. Lestrade finds himself in Molly's bed. Which seems, to both of them, like a pretty big problem...until Molly finds a corpse in her garden.</p><p>Lestrade and Molly try to solve the murder--and hopefully solve the mystery of how they actually feel about each other. Sherlock and John try to figure out how that sapphire got into that chicken...and how this relationship upgrade is supposed to work. Harry, well, all she's trying to do is start up a law practice and get back into the dating game. But they're all trapped in the same weird web; and they're not the only ones being drawn into its center.</p><p>This is a sequel to "Empty Houses." It crosses "The Blue Carbuncle" with a few other things, including T. S. Eliot's <i>The Waste Land.</i>.  If you care about the intertextual stuff, the notes at the end of Chapter 7 will tell you all about that. (NOTES CONTAIN SPOILERS. BIG SPOILERS.) But you do not have to understand <i>The Waste Land</i>, or ever have heard of it, to enjoy the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

**PROLOGUE**

_The Furies are pursuing her. She cannot outrun the stink of carrion that envelops them, the rank wind raised by the frenzied beating of their black wings. There could be three of them or six or twenty, no matter, their shrieks have deafened her to all other sounds. This blurred and rippling mockery of a London street engulfed her miles ago and she fights through it now as if it were icewater. It’s been hours since she started to feel as if she were being flayed but now she can actually see the skin of her forearms rippling. The soles of her feet have peeled away. There is no more running. Time to hide._

_Up a dark tunnel whose walls pulse in nauseating contractions. Bang against a wooden gate. Gate opens and as she bursts through it there is air. For a moment, things stop swimming. Grass growing through cracks between flagstones. A dark bed of loam. Rising from it, ridiculously erect, starry clusters of hyacinth blooms, pink and purple._

_The loam ripples. A wave of earth crests from it and breaks against her feet. She drops to her knees. The star clusters merge together into spirals of light. They unfurl into angels, multiplying around her, wings trailing silently behind, mouths open in song. She swims toward them. The loam parts for her. She breathes it in, peat and earth and the sweetness of decay, so different from the corrupted meat that poisons the air on which her pursuers fly. Releasing the scent of lilacs, the angels take flight, trailing their wings across her shivering skin. She can rest now. She doesn’t have to understand it. She will simply accept the silence, the stillness, the numbness spreading from her core. Let go of memory, let go of desire. The battle is in the air now. Here, in the earth, is peace_.

*             *             *

The toy piano began to play of its own accord. Molly tried to follow the music but her feet kept getting bigger. Her mother, sitting on the sidelines, shook her head in disapproval. She was pretty sure she was still dancing with Sherlock, though he was dressed more like John, and for some reason he’d had his hair cut like Harry’s. Also from the waist down he appeared to be a gigantic hound. At least, when one of her clown-sized feet came down, it landed on an enormous black paw.

“No!” shouted her mother. “You can’t have it. No. Because it’s evidence.”

Molly realized her eyes were closed. She tried to open them. At long last, she succeeded.

She was not, in fact, back in her old bedroom in St. John’s Wood dancing with a half-animal half-man while her mother looked on. That was a dream. In the real world, Molly was lying in the full-size bed she had insisted, against her mother’s wishes, on buying for her apartment. She was wearing her knickers. That was apparently all. The cable jumper was in a heap on the floor, with her bra rather pathetically curled up in a corner. Her jeans were nowhere to be seen.

“No, I can’t just sign it out and bring it back when you’re done. There is such a thing as a chain of custody.”

Molly had to give herself quite a talking to before she could force her eyes to move in the direction of the voice. It was not, of course, her mother’s. It belonged to the man sitting up on the other side of the bed.

She started at the top, with the short silvery hair. That she had seen before. His face, the contracted brows and the look of irritation, the half-snarl as he shouted into the mobile in one hand, that was also familiar. Maybe she could avoid noticing the expanse of naked chest that was just a blur in her peripheral vision, or the fact that her lilac-print sheets were puddled around his lap as he sat there, in her bed, yelling into his mobile.

“Look, is Harry there? Good. Put me on speaker. What time is it anyway? What gives you the idea that you have the right to wake me from a deep sleep on a Saturday morning and demand that I break the law so you can have your arse well covered as you run off on some wild goose chase? Oh. Yes. Very amusing. You—oh. Harry. Please tell Sherlock what a chain of custody is. Evidently that information has gone the way of the solar system.”

There was a pause. Lestrade’s furious stare was still focused straight ahead of him. Molly steeled herself for a quick glance at Lestrade’s torso.

That torso was definitely naked. And who knew what he was or was not wearing under that sheet. The one certain thing was that he wasn't wearing any trousers, since those were on the floor next to her bra.

Underneath the anxiety, Molly felt some little thoughts beginning to grow. Thoughts like, _maybe he really does like me_. _Maybe this is how things get started._ _Do I have anything in the fridge? Or we could go out for breakfast…_

Lestrade let out a cry of rage. He ended the call with a vicious jab, staring down at the phone and shaking it. “Do you _believe_ that bastard? The _neck_!”

Molly said, “Um…”

Lestrade’s head snapped around. His eyes fastened onto her. A look of terror and dread spread across his face with the speed of an exploding bomb. The look of a man who, until that moment, had completely forgotten where he was and how he got there. The look of a man who has quite suddenly remembered that he recently made a terrible mistake.

All of Molly’s little thoughts carbonized instantaneously, leaving behind only bleak humiliation.

“Molly,” Lestrade said, as his face formed, too late, into a smile. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I was already up,” she said.

A lie; one of her million trivial acts of self-denial, involuntarily born of the overpowering wish to please that she had struggled against, without success, all her adult life.

“That was Sherlock,” Lestrade said, throwing back the sheets and hopping out of bed. “Trying to get John’s revolver back.”

He was wearing a pair of striped briefs. That was a relief.

“Is he in danger?”

“No,” Lestrade said, padding across the carpet and collecting his discarded clothing. “No, they’ve found a diamond inside a duck or something and of course Sherlock can’t rest until they track it to its point of origin. They don’t need John’s revolver for that. No one’s even dead yet.”

He had his trousers and shirt in an armful now. “Is it all right if I just pop into your shower for a bit?”

Molly nodded. She was pretty sure that if she spoke it would only come out as a mortified squeak.

“Thanks,” Lestrade said.

And there he went, through the door to the bathroom.

Once the door was closed and the water running, Molly leapt out of bed. She tore through her wardrobe and assembled an outfit of some kind, caring only about how fast and how completely she could cover her naked limbs. That done, and last night’s clothes scooped into the laundry basket, she could think of nothing to do but pace back and forth, listening to the shower, automatically smoothing her hair down with one nervous hand. After a few minutes she went to the CD player and put in _Ladies of the Canyon_ ; but even Joni’s voice couldn’t help.

Lestrade would come out of the bathroom and she’d have worn a groove in the carpet and he’d see how anxious she was and it would all be so awkward. Obviously he regretted everything. And she…she couldn’t figure out how it had happened. In the cab, he had been complimenting her on her dancing. She’d blurted out something infantile about wanting to dance all night, and he’d said he knew a place…and they went. And they danced. And when they stopped dancing she basically drank because she was too nervous to talk. And then they’d come back to her place and he’d offered to see her to the front door because it was set back from the street a bit and one of the street lights was out. And she’d asked if he wanted coffee or something…and over the coffee he’d kissed her. It was such a surprise she didn’t even notice how it felt. There was only the exciting little tremble in the pit of her stomach as she thought at last, something is happening to me.

There were times, in the days after the fall, when the way Sherlock looked at her had made her think he might be about to kiss her. But she’d been wrong about that. Obviously. And then she didn’t see it coming with Greg. Though she had liked dancing with him. With the music, knowing the steps, it was easier to enjoy feeling the warmth of his hand in the small of her back, and the way his legs would sometimes gently brush up against hers.

Greg. Detective Inspector Lestrade. In the shower now, washing her touch off him as fast as he could, wondering how to manage the excruciating exit from the scene of his blunder.

Molly wandered down the stairs and into her living room. It was a beautiful day. She gazed out through the sliding doors at the grassy plot behind the apartment. There were three flagstones, some shaggy grass, and then the garden. It was the garden that had made her take the place. It was the size of a postage stamp—barely six feet by eight—but that was about all she had time to work with. Molly had been waiting all spring for planting weather. Last weekend when the weather turned at last she’d finally dug it all up and put down the peat moss and the compost and planted the hyacinths. They were her favorite, apart from lilacs which she was afraid to start on until she’d had some success with something smaller. She maybe hadn’t needed two dozen hyacinths, but they were on sale.

She’d go out into the garden. When Greg—Lestrade—came out, he’d see where she was; if he wanted to speak to her, he’d come out, and if not, he’d be glad enough to make his escape. And maybe, in gratitude for that, he wouldn’t tell everyone at work.

Just the thought of it brought on warnings of panic. She was ridiculous to all of them already. She knew that. And now to her worse-than-unrequited crush on Sherlock there would be added this hideous misadventure. Poor Molly. Poor pathetic Molly. Is she really that desperate?

Am I? Molly thought, walking through the open door. Is this what women do when they get desperate? Dance with a man and take him home thinking I’ve got to do this sometime with someone, and he’s handsome, and he’s a good dancer, and he’s a little pissed and so am I but he’s nice, he’s been just so nice…

Molly forced herself to stop thinking. She looked at the garden.

Around the edges of the garden, hyacinths swayed drunkenly in all directions—bent, tilting, or knocked right over and smashed. Pale stars of pink and purple drowned in streams of loose dirt that snaked across the flagstones. In the center of the plot, where there should have been hyacinths, was a big shaggy brown mutt of a dog, scratching in the loose dirt with his nails.

“Oh!” Molly shouted, charging the dog. “Get away! Get away from there! Shoo!”

The dog bounded out through the wooden gate that led to the laneway. Somehow it had been left open. Molly advanced toward the ruin it had made.

She did not advance far. Because now that the dog was gone, she could see what was lying in the middle of her garden.

Her eyes began to put it together. A dirtied face, turned to the side, blood pooling in the cheek that nestled in the earth. A disordered tangle of long, dark hair, its curls now clotted with soil. Hands with clenched fingers still buried up to the wrists in the dirt. Sharp shoulderblades, knobs of spine, skin pale except for a little dusting of brown earth. Legs curled up. Feet caked in blood and dirt.

In her mind the report began to write itself. Unidentified female, no clothing, lividity and muscle rigidity suggests death occurred at least six hours previous to…

Her body did something different. It wrapped her arms around her stomach and threw her down to her knees. She heard herself screaming “Greg! Oh my God…GREG!”

Molly couldn’t say how long it was before she heard his feet behind her. She heard him mutter, “Oh God.” She heard him on his phone, saying something she couldn’t quite pay attention to. She felt his hands on her shoulders.

“Molly, go inside. I’ve called it in. I’ll take it from here.”

He took her by the elbow, one hand on her shoulder, and lifted her gently to her feet. He turned her around to face him. She looked down at her feet, shaking her head.

He put a hand under her chin and lifted it. She looked into his eyes.  

“It’s not your fault,” Lestrade said, calmly, as if nothing odd had happened either last night or just now. “It’s not your problem. At least it won’t be for long. I’ll stay here with her.”

She shook her head.

“No. I’m all right.”

“Honestly, Molly, this would come as a shock to anyone. Why don’t you—“

“It doesn’t bother me now,” Molly said, finding that it didn’t. “It was a surprise. That’s all. I want to stay, until they come to take her.”

Lestrade looked once more into her eyes, and then nodded. “I suppose whatever she turns out to have died of, you’ll have seen it before.”

He took out his mobile and squatted down on the flagstones, taking pictures of the torn flowers smeared on the bleeding bottoms of the corpse’s feet. “Poor woman.”

“She must have walked a long way,” Molly said.

“Run, more like. Look at the abrasions on the balls of the feet. Barefoot and naked, running for her life. And she ends up in your back garden, trying to dig her own grave.”

Lestrade moved carefully up to take more photos of the body.

“Her own grave?” Molly echoed.

“All this loose dirt and no shoe prints,” said Lestrade. “Anyone who was here to bury her, he’d have worn shoes and he’d have left footprints on his way out. And it’s the last place your ordinary murderer would try to bury a body. Risk of discovery and the soil can’t be deep enough. No, she came here alone, for some mad reason of her own.”

“And the hands,” Molly said, softly. “Like she was trying to burrow into it.”

Lestrade shook his head. “Too bad I just told Sherlock off. He’d be handy to have on this one. He’s good with the weird ones. I could still call him, I suppose.”

Lestrade glanced back. He saw, evidently, the horror Molly felt as she realized that Sherlock, or anyone else who was called to this crime scene, would surely be able to deduce why Lestrade was at Molly’s apartment on a Saturday morning in the clothes he’d worn Friday night.

“No, you’re right,” he said, though she hadn’t spoken. “If Sherlock comes down the media will right down after him, baying at his heels. We’ll wait for the, what does he call us, the...”

“The official bunglers,” Molly said, before she could stop herself.

“That's it. Thanks, Molly.”

“I’m sorry,” Molly said.

“Don’t be,” Lestrade answered, though she could see he was still annoyed. “That’s what I do. Bungle.”

Molly wasn’t sure why he said it so bitterly. Mostly the horrible things Sherlock said just rolled off Lestrade’s back. Molly had always wished she could take them as lightly.

Lestrade finished taking his photos and straightened up. “Listen, Molly…it’s very important that when the detective in charge gets here, we cooperate fully.”

“The detective in charge? Won’t that be…you?”

“Whoever finds the body is considered a suspect until cleared,” Lestrade said gently. “For this one, that’s you and me. They’ll question us separately. It will all be all right as long as you tell the truth.”

Molly’s stomach began trying to implode.

“I know, Molly. It’s a revolting development. But it can’t be helped. You see…when a body finds a body, as it were, it’s often while he’s out in the dark night doing something he wouldn’t want to write home about. So people tell little lies, thinking it won’t matter. But building a case is like building a house. If there’s a crack in the foundation it weakens the entire structure. One white lie told at the beginning can bugger the whole investigation. So whatever they ask you about…you know…last night and this morning, tell the truth.”

 “But what is the truth?” Molly said, distressed.  

Lestrade’s head drew back a little. “You don’t remember what happened?”

“I do remember,” Molly answered, faintly. “I just don’t…know…what it all means.”

Lestrade looked puzzled. “What it _means_?”

Molly turned away. She crouched down in the dirt near the woman’s face. The woman’s eyes were open, the pupils wide and empty. Her lips were blue. Her cheeks were sunken and her chin had a pinched look—even accounting for what death always did to the faces.

Molly’s eyes flickered all over the body, estimating wrist circumference, lingering over the hooped ribs.

“This won’t be a very nice story,” Lestrade mused. “Naked, barefoot, and running says she was being held against her will. She risked escape. My guess is she had good reasons.”

“Someone starved her,” Molly said, quietly. “And then poisoned her.”

Lestrade glanced at her. “How do you know—“

They were distracted by the noise of the wooden gate to the lane. It was being opened by a stout, florid-faced man in a knitted cap and a too-tight trenchcoat, who was trailed by a weedy youth in a blue jumpsuit.

“Oh no,” Lestrade groaned.

“What?” Molly said.

“It is the week-end, after all,” Lestrade muttered. “Brace yourself, Molly. We will not be working with the A team today.”

Molly waited, trying not to cringe, as the stout man bent over the body, rubbing his beefy hands together with a kind of gleeful smugness.

“Here’s a pretty business!” he chuckled to himself. “A very pretty business indeed! Young lady planted in another young lady’s garden. Man’s best friend already taken an interest, by the look of it. Lucky we’ll have her out of there before she begins to sprout, eh?”

Laughing at his own witticism, the man in the trenchcoat and cap turned toward Molly. Instinctively, Molly took a step closer to Lestrade. Lestrade didn’t do anything to welcome that; but he didn’t move away or flinch either.

“Inspector Athelney Jones,” the man in the trenchcoat said. “You would be Ms. Hooper, lately reinstated at St. Bart’s.”

Flushing, as she always did when her recent perfidy was alluded to, Molly looked down at her feet and nodded.

“And my old friend and colleague Inspector Gregory Lestrade,” said Jones, with an equally unfriendly look.

“Jones,” Lestrade replied curtly.

“Well, well, well,” Jones said, looking from one to the other. “We’ll soon have this cleared up.”

Molly didn’t like the sound of that at all. And neither, judging by the set of his jaw, did Lestrade.

*             *             *

On top of the granite slab that ran along the island in the center of Harry's unusually spacious kitchen, the chicken’s inedible bits were laid out in an orderly row. The feet in a plastic bowl, the head on a bit of paper towel, and the internal organs one by one on a stream of paper towels that ran nearly the length of the counter. The bird itself, decapitated and denuded and eviscerated, sat on a rack next to the sink.

"Now I want you both to feel right at home," Harry said. "So I set up the autopsy just the way you like it."

She got a box of latex gloves from under the sink and handed a pair to John and a pair to Sherlock.

“You bought these just for us?” John said, while Sherlock pulled his on.

“Don’t be absurd, John,” Sherlock remarked. “These are not medical grade. They don’t have the proper fit. Or the proper snap.”

With a sardonic glance at Sherlock, Harry said, “I keep a box around. They’re handy for the messy jobs. Such as eviscerating a chicken. This slow food thing, I’ll tell you, it’s an adventure.”

"Certainly the possibilities for contamination are endless," John observed. "They just leave the guts in there? Is that even legal?"

"No," said Sherlock, as he looked over the array of internal organs.

"Legal or not, they're out there selling these things every Saturday morning," Harry said. "I suppose our municipal authorities are off regulating something else at that time of day. Anyway, they've a huge following, and very loyal. You'd think if everyone got food poisoning, it would hurt the brand."

“What’s this?” John said, pointing at a putty-colored and vaguely butterfly-shaped heap of glistening flesh.

“That’s the gizzard,” Harry said, pointing with one latex-gloved finger. “That’s where I found the sapphire.”

“Did you remove anything else from this…gizzard?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes,” said Harry, pushing over a small plastic bowl. Sherlock bent over it eagerly. There were a few very small, very smooth stones in it, as well as a kind of gritty slurry. John left the litter to Sherlock and turned back to the gizzard. He was intrigued by an indentation in one of the lobes.  

“Harry,” John said. “Is this where the jewel was?”

Harry nodded. “I had to kind of put a knife in under it and pop it out.”

“Sherlock,” John said. “Based on the medical evidence—“

“That stone has been in the gizzard for at least four but not more than six weeks.”

Harry and John looked at him.

“The size and shape of the stones,” Sherlock said. “In any fowl’s gizzard, the stones grind each other down. That's what a gizzard is for--to trap small hard objects and then use the friction to grind up the bird's food. But that forty-grain weight of crystallized charcoal over there scores a 9 on the Mohs scale. It’s much harder than anything else that chicken could find. The fact that most of these pebbles have been worn nearly away to dust,” Sherlock said, sticking a finger into the slurry, “shows the stone has been in the gizzard for some time. The lifespan of an Essex Whitetail—“

“How do _you_ know it’s an Essex Whitetail?” Harry demanded.

“The severed head bears the distinctive six-lobed pale pink comb,” Sherlock observed. “The skin on the feet, which you have not yet peeled, still show the peculiar fish-scale pattern unique to the breed, and these reddish bits of rock recovered from the gizzard are characteristic of the geology in certain parts of southern Essex.”

Sherlock stopped. John finally said, “The lifespan?”

“Ah. Yes. The lifespan of an Essex Whitetail from hatching to market is typically not more than twelve weeks. At four or even five weeks it is doubtful that the bird would be mature enough to swallow the stone without fatally choking on it. Deduction: the stone was introduced into the bird four to six weeks earlier. Does that coincide with the medical evidence, John?”

“Yes,” John said, reluctantly. “As I was saying, when I was rather rudely interrupted, the stone had become embedded in the gizzard wall and the muscle had begun to deform around it. That shows the stone was introduced when the bird was still growing.”

“Excellent,” Sherlock said, continuing to poke around in the slurry. “This interesting fluid, of course, is compounded of the bird’s natural secretions and the dust of the pebbles that have been ground down against the jewel. Turning to the stone itself,” Sherlock said, approaching the square of aluminum foil on which Harry had laid it, “we see that the facets are still sharp and that it shines quite brilliantly even on this improvised background and in the rather inadequate light of Harry’s kitchen. It surprises me that more jewelers don’t feed their stones to chickens. They would seem to be nature’s gem polishers."

John's eyes lingered on the stone. The blue at its heart was dark but brilliant. Showers of tiny rainbow fragments danced all over Harry's ceiling. Not more than an inch across, but it was still practically lighting the place up all by itself.

Sherlock was more intrigued by the internal organs. "Was there anything of interest in the crop?”

“Indeed there was,” Harry said, shepherding them toward a ceramic ramekin.

John looked into it. “It’s just feed,” he said.

Sherlock’s eyes traveled quickly over it. “Yes, Harry, you’ve made your point. This bird was in fact free-range and organically fed. In addition to several types of wheat and bran, it seems to have ingested a wide variety of local flora and insect life.”

“Thank you,” Harry said. "I'll remind you later that you stipulated to that."

“What about the duodenum?” Sherlock prompted.

“Haven’t opened it yet,” Harry said. “Once I found that thing in the gizzard, I got a bit off-task. But here,” she said, handing Sherlock a pair of kitchen shears. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, with genuine sincerity.

Sherlock, eyes shining with anticipation, moved down the line. John followed Harry into the living area.

“You know the Romans used to predict the future this way,” she said, sitting on the sofa.

“What way?” John asked, taking up the other cushion.

“Reading bird entrails,” Harry said. “That always seemed weird to me. But this morning, I sort of get it.”

"What are you going to do with the jewel?"

"Take it down to the nearest police station at once," Harry replied promptly. "I saw the way you were looking at it. I myself find it strangely compelling. Sherlock's pretending he doesn't care, but I'm not convinced. The longer we have that thing around the more likely we all are to start turning on each other and raving about the Preciousssssssss."

"Is there a reward?" John asked.

"Believe me, I've been Googling jewel thefts ever since I sent you that text," Harry said. "So far I haven't found anything about a ginormous sapphire going missing."

“What do you know about the farm it came from?” John said.

“They’ve got a website,” Harry said. “I was looking them up before you came.”

John pulled the computer over. There was a window open on the screen, but it wasn’t someone else’s website. There was a recent photo of Harry in the upper right hand corner above the legend, “PrinceHalV.” To the left Harry had put in her age, her height, a number which he assumed was meant to be her weight though it was quite generously underestimated…and under the word “Seeking?” he read, “honest, thoughtful, intelligent single woman, 25-40. Appearance irrelevant. No games.”

Realizing what John was looking at, Harry snatched the computer away and closed the window.

“Internet dating?” John demanded, so loudly that Sherlock looked up from the incision he was making in the duodenum. “Seriously, Harry? It’s come to that?”

Harry snapped the screen shut, clutched the laptop protectively to her chest, and stalked out into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Oh, well done, John,” he muttered to himself.

“Congratulations,” Sherlock called over. “We haven’t been on the case ten minutes and you’ve already alienated a witness. Well go on,” Sherlock barked, waving the bloody shears at him. “Talk to her. Let her cry on you or do whatever it is that you usually do to get women you’ve enraged to like you again. We need her information.”

Highly irritated with both of them, John got up and headed into the bedroom.

Harry didn’t answer his knock, so he just pushed the door open. The computer sat on her desk. Harry was lying on top of her bed, looking up at the ceiling. She’d made the quilt herself, long ago, from a pattern based on the solar system. John could just see Pluto in its orbit down by where her left foot was. Poor Pluto. How long had it been since it was demoted?

“I’m sorry,” John said. “That was a very dickish thing to say.”

Harry closed her eyes. “No. You’re right. It is an act of desperation.”

“What…where are you…”

Harry sighed, explosively. “It’s a new women-only site called e-Lesbos,” she said, with great self-contempt.

“Well…so…e-Lesbos, then.” John struggled for something blandly supportive to say. “Is it nice? What's it like?”

“It’s like any other internet dating site for people my age,” Harry burst out. “It’s a barren fucking waste land littered with the bones of the fallen. It’s hopeless; but you can’t refuse the quest, can you? What else were human beings made for? So you saddle up and raise the banners and out you ride, again, in search of the holy bleeding grail. True love. I believed in it once.”

John wondered whether he believed in it. And, if what was going on right now in 221B was not true love, what exactly one might call it.

“I just didn’t expect you to be so…organized…about it,” John said. “I suppose…I thought you’d just…find someone, when the time was right. The way you found Clara.”

Harry looked back up at the ceiling, and heaved a sigh.

“We can't all be as lucky as you've been, John,” Harry said. “Most of us could go on sharing with flatmates till the end of time without finding a soulmate. Anyone with _my_ baggage who’s looking for love had better be _stunning._ I was never stunning, but at least I used to be young.”

“But you…you have so much to offer,” John said, unpleasantly startled at how much he sounded like their mother. “You’re funny, you’re brave, you…you can knock a man out with one swing of a crystal decanter…”

He thought Harry might laugh just a little; but she didn’t even manage a full smile.

And you’re…you know…”

“Stop there,” Harry said, sitting bolt upright. “You’re doing so well. If you try to tell me I’m beautiful I’ll know you’re lying and it’ll all be ruined.”

“But you’re not trying to be beautiful. Are you?”

Harry threw herself back down on the bed, turning her back on him.

After a painful silence, John said, “Christ, Harry, I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.”

Harry’s shoulders heaved as she sighed.

“I know," she said. "It's not your fault you don't understand. God knows it's complicated."

“I could try,” John said, hoping they could get out of this particularly awkward place before Sherlock finished messing about with the entrails.

“Thanks," Harry said. "But no."

Searching for something to look at in the silence that followed, John’s eyes found a framed photo on Harry’s desk, next to the computer. It was of the two of them as children. He was perhaps four, Harry three years older. They had been playing with costumes. He was wearing his little soldier’s uniform, carrying his toy gun. Harry had on a nurse’s cap and apron.

John didn’t remember that photo being taken. But he remembered why it had been taken. Because he could remember that one summer day, he and Harry had been leading a special rescue mission out by the yew bushes in the back garden. Harry had on the jacket of John’s soldier uniform—she was too tall for the trousers—and John had on the cap and apron. They were rescuing pilots who had been downed behind enemy lines. John had insisted on being Florence Nightingale, and though Harry kept telling him there were no airplanes in the Crimean War, she let him do it. They had finally found the stuffed lion that Harry had hidden in the bracken, and John was wrapping its wounded paw in leaves, when they heard their father’s footsteps on the brick path behind them.

Harry sat up and slid off the bed.

“All right,” she said. “I’m over it now. Let’s go check on Sherlock before he decides to burn something.”

She tucked the laptop under one arm and opened the door. Sherlock’s gloves lay in a heap by the sink. He was crouched on one of the bar stools Harry had lined up by the counter, poking away at Harry’s mobile.

“Why yes, Sherlock, you can use my phone,” Harry said. “Thanks for asking.”

Sherlock looked up. “Did you save the feathers?”

Harry grimaced. “You have to scald the bird in hot water before you pluck it, and…suffice to say the feathers are in a large plastic bag, where they have congealed into a sodden lump of nauseating sludge that even you wouldn’t touch.”

“Pity,” Sherlock said, rather severely. “It would be useful to know what the bird looked like when it was alive.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Harry said. “I’ve been posting the pictures to Facebook all morning.”

“Pictures?” John echoed.

“If you will recall,” Harry said, as she walked over to the living room, “Sherlock and I had a little wager going about whether he would taste the difference between an organic free-range chicken and a battery-farmed one. I decided to document the process in case of a postprandial dispute.”

She pulled up a stool and set the laptop down on the counter, opening up her Facebook page. Under “albums” she selected “The Adventure of the Delicious Chicken,” and opened it up.

She had in fact taken several photos, including one of the woman behind the poultry stall handing over the bird. She was a wiry woman, with a weathered skin wrapped tightly around her bones. She had thinning brown hair and a grin showing what John was fairly certain were false teeth. She held the bird’s feet high in one hand, its dangling head brushing against the countertop of the stall. The banner above the stall read “Kingfisher Family Farm, Oakshott, Essex.”

“There,” Sherlock said, pointing at the tail. “You see those two horizontal rows of black feathers.”

John saw. “So?”

“Typically, John,” Sherlock said slowly, “the tail of an Essex Whitetail is white. But as with any species there are some variations in coloration. The barred tail is one of them; it’s not unheard of but it is unusual. Whoever put the stone into it chose this particular bird because he could be sure of recognizing its markings again later. At least he thought he could.” Sherlock turned to Harry.

“Tell me what happened,” he said. “Exactly how did this transaction take place? Include every detail you can remember.”

Harry took a deep breath.

“I got up early, because I knew it was going to be an all-day project,” she said. “I reached the market, I would say, at around 8:30. Some of the stalls were still setting up, but Kingfisher Farms was ready. You know how they are—tables in a kind of U shape, with things set out on all three sides. They had a whole row of birds hanging from a rack in the back. Out front they had the flowers—mostly annuals, but they did have a beautiful display of hyacinths. On one side they had the jams, sausages, eggs, all that kind of stuff. And then there were crates of produce set up along the other side—asparagus, spring onions, ramps, greens and berries and whatnot, and these beautiful baby beetroots. I bought a bunch of those to go with the chicken. So far as I know they do not contain any precious or semi-precious stones.”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock said, already beginning to fidget. “Who was working the stall?”

“It seemed like they were short-staffed,” Harry said. “There was quite a queue, even that early in the morning.”

Sherlock appropriated Harry’s computer and pulled up the website for Kingfisher Farms. Under the legend, “A Family Affair,” there was a picture of the Kingfisher family dated October 27, 2001. A younger, less weathered version of the woman in Harry’s photo; a young, sturdy, yellow-haired husband next to her, wearing dungarees and a plaid work shirt; and five children, the oldest a girl of about nine, who was holding the youngest--a boy, based on the clothing; he looked about six months old--in her arms. In between there were one girl of about seven and two preschool-age boys.

“Lil,” Harry said, “that’s the woman who sold me the chicken. The husband wasn’t there. There was a kid named George who helped her get the chicken down from the rack—he looked about twelve to me, so I guess he’s the infant. I’ll tell you who wasn’t there,” Harry said, “was this one. The oldest daughter. I’d have remembered her.”

“Why her particularly?” said Sherlock.

John looked at the picture. The girl had long hair, but it was tied back in a severe ponytail. She wore dungarees and a plaid shirt, like her father. Nothing pink. Nothing sparkly. No flowers embroidered on the pants pockets. No trim of any kind.

“Never mind,” Harry finally said.

“Right,” said John. “But the others were there?”

Harry shrugged. “I can’t be certain.”

Sherlock pressed on. “What exactly did you say during this exchange?”

“I got up to the front of the queue,” Harry said. “The mother—Lil—said good morning, or something…”

“Please do provide the exact wording when you can recall it,” Sherlock interrupted.

“Fine,” Harry said. “Well, I don’t recall the exact wording, but I do remember she asked what I was looking for, and I said I was looking for a very special chicken. I explained about you, Sherlock,” she said, a little truculently. “And how I was looking to make a believer of you. She thought it was funny. So she and George got the chicken, and I asked how much, and you don’t even want to know what it cost me—“

“I do want to know,” Sherlock put in.

“Twenty pounds.”

John let out an exclamation of astonishment and outrage.

“Look, John, there is a reason why people shifted to battery-farming and it’s not because it makes the product better. You want the quality, you have to pay for it. Compared to other organic poultry farmers these prices are not that unreasonable.”

“Did you pay cash?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes. They’re not set up for plastic.”

“Interesting,” Sherlock said. “But there was no awkwardness? No sudden hesitation? Nobody looked as if they'd suddenly made a mistake?”

Harry thought for a moment.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Harry finally said. “But it did strike me that George—the youngest boy—seemed upset. At least he was distracted. Lil had to speak to him pretty sharply to get him moving.”

“What was he distracted by?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Harry said. “He was staring at me for a moment, just before he went to help Lil get the chicken down from the rack. But I didn’t attach any importance to it. Kids stare at me sometimes.”

“Why?” Sherlock asked, innocently.

Harry and John looked at each other.

“Because they don’t always know whether I’m a boy or a girl,” Harry finally replied. “The short hair, you know.”

And something else, John added silently. Some indefinable thing about Harry. John was used to it; Sherlock apparently hadn’t noticed it; but other people did. It wasn’t that she looked like a man. She was obviously a woman. That was what seemed to puzzle people.

“Well,” Sherlock said. “Let's get a cab to Hackney and see if Kingfisher Family Farms is still there.”

John nodded, and snatched his leather jacket off the back of the sofa where he had thrown it. Sherlock picked up his scarf and began wrapping it around his neck. It was an automatic action John had seen Sherlock do a hundred times; but John now found a strange little shiver going through him as he watched it. Sherlock shrugged on his overcoat and joined John at the door.

Instead of opening it, Sherlock turned back to where Harry still sat on her barstool near the computer.

“Coming, Harry?” Sherlock called.

Harry looked startled.

“What—you mean on the adventure?”

“To the market, anyhow,” Sherlock replied.

John watched her hesitate. He could almost see what she was thinking. He fancied, at any rate, that what she was thinking was, _do I really want to end up like John?_

“WELCOME TO THE WORKING WEEK…I KNOW IT DON’T THRILL YOU, I HOPE IT DON’T KILL YOU…”

“Crap.” Harry picked up her mobile. “That’ll be a client. No adventure for Harry today. But before you go, John, will you get the stone back from him and put it back on the foil?”

John stuck his hand out. “Come on, Sherlock, let’s have it.”

With an aggrieved roll of his eyes, Sherlock shook the sapphire out of his coatsleeve and placed it in John’s palm.

John walked to the counter and replaced it on the foil. “Thanks,” he murmured to Harry. “I didn’t even see him take it.”

Harry nodded at him, then pushed the talk button. “Harriet Watson and Associates. How may I help you?”

John rejoined an irritated Sherlock at the door.

“Well, of course, if you prefer it,” he heard Harry saying. “But…”

“You trust your own sister more than you trust me?” Sherlock said, lifting an eyebrow.

“She’s a lawyer, Sherlock,” John retorted. “When _she_ does something illegal involving private property, there are consequences. Let’s go.”

Sherlock snorted, and opened the door.

As it closed behind them, John could just hear Harry saying, “Wait. You’re _where?_   Because why?”

Sherlock hesitated on the doorstep, holding up a hand. But Harry’s voice had dropped to a murmur, and they could make nothing out.

“Whatever that is, I’m sure she can handle it,” John said.

“Perhaps,” Sherlock answered. “Sometimes Harry's not as smart as she thinks she is."

They began moving toward the stairs that led to the street entrance.

"She knows her fowl, certainly," Sherlock conceded. "That chicken certainly would have been delicious. But she's not winning any prizes for botany."

Sherlock held up a clear plastic bag in which, evidently, he had sealed some of the bird's stomach contents.

"That's disgusting, Sherlock," John said.

"The way to this case's solution is through that bird's stomach, John," Sherlock replied serenely. "I extracted these from the bird's crop. Harry obviously didn't recognize them; but I'm sure you do."

John forced himself to ignore the bluish slime and focus on the cluster of round, red, compact little pellets inside. They looked somewhat similar to rose hips. But Sherlock was right. John had seen hundreds of these, in varying forms--though never, before this point, in this half-digested state.

"Poppy heads," John said.

"No wonder there's a queue," Sherlock replied. "They're growing opium at Kingfisher Farms."

John shook his head. "So...I mean...if the chickens are eating poppy heads...are they literally addictive?"

Sherlock threw back his head with a little bark of laughter, and pushed open the street door.

"An intriguing hypothesis, John," he said. "But a trifle farfetched. I believe your own knowledge of organic chemistry will argue against it if you pause to consider it. No, I doubt Kingfisher Farms is experimenting with chicken as an opium delivery device. But I do believe we'll find that there's more produce being sold at that stall than Harry realizes. I nearly fell into the error," Sherlock said, as they trooped down to the footpath, "of assuming that these were the indigenous variety. But of course the husband was wounded in Afghanistan--"

John stopped moving. Sherlock eventually stopped too, once he realized.

"Wounded in Afghanistan."

"Well of course, John."

"How."

"That photo on the farm website," Sherlock said. "Taken in late October, 2001."

"Around the time of the first deployment," John said. "But even so--"

"Most small-business websites don't use photos that are over ten years old. The whole point is for the customers to recognize you. One can only assume, since they seem to be relying heavily on the 'family farm' ethos to draw in business, that this was the most recent photograph they had of the entire family. At least it was the most recent one they felt safe putting online. Something happened to that family after that photo was taken. Harry said the husband wasn't at the stall. And now they're growing a species of poppy common to central Asia. So it comes down to--"

"Afghanistan or Iraq," John muttered darkly.

"No, there's no room for uncertainty," Sherlock said, surprised. "Afghanistan. Definitely Afghanistan. Poppies don't grow in the desert, John."

John looked at Sherlock. There was no flicker of comprehension. Sherlock really hadn't understood the reference. Maybe, to Sherlock, their first meeting was not an important memory. Not as important as it was to John, anyhow.

John stepped up to the kerb and began motioning for a cab. A breeze had sprung up, and he could see white clouds forming. Their beautiful day would get grayer. But Sherlock’s eyes were as bright as they’d been that morning. John was reminded, with that familiar mixture of envy and apprehension, how different it was to be Sherlock. How different it would be if all you really ever perceived was the mystery of the moment. If you would never need a blue sky, as long as you had a stolen sapphire shining in each of your eyes.

*    *     *

Athelney Jones’s red-jowled, semi-shaven, choleric face swam a little closer to Lestrade. Spittle had collected at one corner of his mouth, and even from across the interview table, Lestrade thought he could faintly detect the smell of egg and sausage.

“You have no one else that can confirm your whereabouts last night,” Jones said, unnecessarily loudly.

“Not after we arrived at Molly’s place,” said Lestrade, leaning back in the chair and seriously considering whether to put his feet on the table. He planned to do it at some point in the interview but it might be best to save it for later. “Somewhere in London there’s a cab driver who might remember taking us from 221B to Swing Shift, and another cab driver who might remember taking us from Swing Shift to Molly’s place, and it’s possible that one or two of the staff or guests at Swing Shift might recall having seen people who fit our description. You’re welcome to use the ratepayers’ time and money to look for all of these people.”

“What time did you reach Molly’s apartment?” Jones replied.

“Late,” Lestrade replied.  

“And how was it that you went home with Molly instead of to your wife?”

Jones grinned unpleasantly. Lestrade thanked his stars that years of working with Sherlock had trained him how to suppress the urge to punch.

“Your information is out of date, Jones. I moved out two months ago. Wendy and I are in the process of filing for divorce.”

“Dear, dear,” said Jones. “Must be upsetting, what? Eight years of marriage gone up the spout. Would put a man in a dangerous frame of mind vis a vis the fairer sex.”

Lestrade knew better than to respond to that. It seemed to him sometimes as if he spent his whole life in rooms like these, goading people into revealing things in spite of themselves—out of anger, out of confusion, out of exhaustion, or simply out of the desire to get out of that room. All the same, it was hard to have arrant stupidity fired at him from across the table and not at least try to swat it away.

“Did she invite you in?” Jones said. “Or did you invite yourself?”

Lestrade was not for a moment concerned that he would ever be tried, or even charged, for this murder. The real problem was that anything Lestrade said about Molly in this interview would eventually become more or less common knowledge.  

“Did she invite you in?” Jones repeated.

If he said yes, he’d be helping Jones make Molly a slut. If he said no, he’d be helping Jones make him a predator. You didn’t want to be either when there was a murder investigation going on near you.

He remembered the advice he’d given Molly. It had been good advice. Or rather, it would have been good advice with almost any other detective in charge.

“I offered to walk her to the door,” Lestrade said. “She asked if I wanted coffee. I said yes. So we walked through the door, and then we were inside.”

“And did you view this as a sexual invitation?”

Well of course he had viewed it as a sexual invitation. He would have thought that even Molly knew that a man his age didn’t go to a single woman’s house late on a Friday night just to _talk_. But he had been wondering all morning whether he was right about that. It wasn’t just the look of mortification on her face when she woke up. The night before, even half-pissed, he knew it wasn’t working for her. And of course he couldn’t stop wondering what he was doing wrong, and that road _always_ led straight to the land of Bungle.

“Did you view it as a sexual invitation?”

“You seem very interested in this topic,” Lestrade replied. “Is it because you yourself have never received a sexual invitation?”

That stung. “Don’t think I don’t know what happened,” Jones snapped. “You smooth-talked your way into Ms. Hooper’s home and inveigled her into your perverted sex games—“

“Inveigled?” Lestrade interjected.

“—and I would think the least you could do, seeing as that poor woman is facing a murder charge, is come clean about your own role in this sordid sexcapade.”

“You actually said the word ‘sexcapade,’” Lestrade said. “Are you a detective, or are you Kitty Riley?”

Jones heaved himself to his feet, slammed both hands down on the table, and leaned across it. The posture reminded Lestrade forcibly of the detective on a terrible American cop show he used to watch as a child. As a child, he’d thought it was brilliant. Jones evidently still did.

“You went to Swing Shift looking for a third party,” Jones shouted. “You found her—“

“The place is called Swing Shift because they play swing music. It’s nothing to do with—“

“—you found the victim, and the three of you took that cab back to your place. Ms. Hooper went along with it up to a point, but when it came to playing the rougher games, Hooper bowed out. The victim, on the other hand--“

“God, that’s awful, Jones,” Lestrade said, leaning his head over the back of the chair and massaging his temples. He’d had a headache all morning and Jones was making it worse. “Just abysmal. As long as you’re making it up, make it a little easier on yourself. Rough sex that got out of hand? You’ll never be able to establish that. The physical evidence will not support it.”

“I don’t need physical evidence,” Jones said, with that dirty grin. “I’ve got Molly Hooper.”

The blazing, obscene absurdity of it all overwhelmed Lestrade’s better judgment.

Lestrade lunged across the table. “If you bully that woman into corroborating this asinine story it will be the lowest fucking thing you have ever done, Jones. Also perhaps the most stupid. You don’t know the time or cause of death yet. You don’t know whether this hypothesis is even possible. And yet you’re dead-set on confirming it. Is it that you don’t _care_ what the real answer is? Or do you actually believe the shite you invent?”

“Says the man who can’t even take a piss without help from the great Sherlock Holmes.”

“Without Sherlock you wouldn’t have made it to detective inspector,” Lestrade shot back. “Thank God Sherlock dropped you when he did. Who knows the damage you could have done as a superintendent.”

“Some of us don’t need theories,” Jones said. “Some of us can just get our man and move on, without any help from quacks and perverts.”

“Well, I will admit, Jones,” Lestrade replied, “that arresting everyone at the scene and then coercing a confession out of the most vulnerable suspect does lead to conviction more often than it should. And I’m sure that _some_ of the people you’ve sent to prison using this method were actually guilty; but that’s only because most murder is just as stupid as you are. But some murders are different, and this is one of them. Monday morning the regulars will be in and as soon as someone with two brain cells reads your report they’re going to take this one away from you and give it to someone with a better chance of finding the killer. Which would be nearly anyone.”

“Oh I’ve found the killer,” Jones said, in what was meant to be an ominous tone.

Lestrade’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and checked the text alert.

_Found Molly. Out in hallway getting briefed. Harry._

“Right,” Lestrade said. “My cooperation with your investigation is at an end, Jones. Good morning.”

“Where are you going?” Jones roared, as Lestrade stood up. “We’re not finished here!”

“Charge me or piss off, Jones,” said Lestrade, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Outside in the hallway, Lestrade saw Harry, sitting on the bench next to Molly. Molly was slumped over with her head in her hands, nodding every so often as Harry talked.

“You have not been charged, Molly,” Harry said. “Remember. You are voluntarily cooperating with the investigation.”

“It doesn’t feel voluntary,” Molly said.

“Well it isn’t, really, because if you refuse to cooperate voluntarily then they might well come back and make you cooperate involuntarily which is even more painful, scary, and humiliating. The point is, you do not _have_ to answer the detective’s questions. So Molly. Look at me.”

Molly glanced up, then looked back down. Harry sighed.

“This particular policeman is not your friend. Never volunteer information. When he asks a question, look at me before you answer it and I will tell you yes or no. Make your answers as short as possible. Do not get drawn into an argument. No matter how much it feels like you’re winning, you won’t be.”

Harry looked up as she heard Lestrade’s footsteps. He knew, as he met her gaze, that she was thinking of the hours they’d spent together, not so long ago, in a room very much like the one he had just left. Harry had done pretty well at following her own advice. But Harry had obviously been frightened and upset, underneath the façade. Given a few more days, Lestrade thought it likely he would have broken her down.

And then sent Harry down for a crime committed by someone else against a completely different person.

Bungler.

“How long have you been practicing criminal law, Harry?” Lestrade said.

“For about five minutes,” Harry replied. “Cheer up, Molly. I do wills and estates. Nothing rattles me.”

“Wills and estates?” Molly said, emerging from her fog of misery. “That’s like pathology. Everyone’s dead by the time you turn up.”

Molly’s red-rimmed eyes glanced in Lestrade’s direction, then swerved back to Harry. Seeing that put a little extra pang into Lestrade’s hangover. Last evening, at the party, he’d been struck by how vibrant Molly looked while she was dancing. So excited about her new skill. So young and bright-eyed and really, when you looked at her at the right moment, charming. And one night with the Official Bungler had turned her into this weeping wreck.

 “Shows what you know,” Harry said. “Most of my job is dealing with the survivors. Nothing wrecks the human spirit like a fight over an inheritance.”

The door to the interview room opened. A uniformed officer approached from behind the desk.

“Time for your closeup,” Harry said, standing up and helping Molly off the bench.

“Good luck, Molly,” Lestrade said. “Listen to Harry. She knows what she’s doing.”

“You taught me everything I know,” Harry said.

Molly finally met Lestrade’s eyes. That self-conscious smile, the nervous tic that came and went roughly every ten seconds whenever Molly was talking to Sherlock, flashed briefly. The tears made it grotesque. Lestrade was unexpectedly filled with anger. Anger at the cruel imbecile waiting in that room, at the idiots who had promoted that cruel imbecile, at the room itself, at his own incompetence, at Sherlock, at whoever really had killed that poor woman--at all the things that had conspired to stamp that unhappy smile on Molly’s face.  

“I’ll wait out here,” Lestrade said, before he knew what was happening. “I mean—if you—“

Molly swallowed, and nodded. “Thanks. I do. I mean…thanks.”

Harry walked into the room, with Molly clutching her hand. Lestrade sat on the bench, listening to the door slam.

Home to your wife.

An amicable divorce. That’s what Wendy said she wanted. That was what they would have. No raised voices or thrown crockery. No scenes in public. Wendy had the house for now; but she’d agreed to sell it and split the proceeds. No children, no things worth fighting over.

The fight, in any case, had gone out of him long ago. There were a few weeks there where he had left his revolver at work, because he was afraid of what would happen if it were in the house. A time of bewilderment, pain, anger that he tried to fire in every direction but hers. Long arguments during which it seemed as if she was speaking a completely different language. Visits to a couples therapist, who took Wendy’s side on everything. Well naturally. He was a homicide detective, he steeped himself in depravity and violence day in day out. An unnatural way to live. Stood to reason he’d make a terrible husband—a man drawn to a life full of blunt force trauma and ligature marks and blood spatters and powder burns and everywhere all the time the waxen faces and glassy stares of the newly dead. Emotionally distant, Wendy told the counselor. Physically withdrawn. Great difficulties with intimacy.

Well what about you, Wendy, he’d think. What about the night I came home from my first murder. Father calls the station out of his mind, his two children dead on their beds, throats cut, blood everywhere, each boy laid out with his hands folded over his favorite soft toy. Interview the father at the scene, classic abusive spouse, spot that in fifteen minutes. No Sherlock Holmes necessary. Photo of the mother, circulate to all ports of call, she’s picked up at a railway depot in Dover before teatime. Arrest and duly court-ordered medical exam for the mother. Bruises and scars, old and new, from neck to ankles. Fingers broken and healed multiple times. Evidence of sexual assault, old and new. Traces of blood on the hands, on her face and throat where she’d touched it with her bloody hands, trying to comprehend what she’d done. Prints match the prints on the knife handle; but you’d know it anyway, one look at her, the hideous guilt and the horrible grief and the anger. Absolutely silent under interrogation. Would not speak, could not speak, who knew. Given pencils and paper would only draw pictures, abstract shapes but full of fear and pain and damage. Couldn’t kill the father. Killed the kids instead. Sleeping pills first so they wouldn’t be afraid. My first day on the job. Got a murder, solved a murder, killer in the bag. If you had wanted to hear it, Wendy, if you hadn’t told me not to bring my disgusting business home with me…you might have been surprised to know, in the end, how solving his first case doesn’t actually make a young up-and-coming detective feel so very much better.

Though solving a case does feel a hell of a lot better than not solving it. That I could also have told you, Wendy. If you had wanted to hear it. Emotionally distant. Withdrawn. Just like you, Wendy. Smiling at you and going to parties and the museum and the zoo and pretending we still knew each other. A hypocrite. Yes. Just like you.

END CHAPTER ONE

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I write original fiction it's usually in a created world where I get to just make stuff up (within reason). Real world, you have to look stuff up. For this story, I had to research, among other things, how to kill, pluck, and eviscerate a chicken. There are a surprising number of websites devoted to this topic.
> 
> I picked wills and estates as Harry's area of expertise partly because it worked for "Norwood Builder," which is one of the stories "Empty Houses" is based on. As I developed a backstory for her it occurred to me that she probably went into wills and estates because it would be reasonably compatible with her alcoholism. It's mostly 9-to-5 work, it's fairly predictable, and there wouldn't be a lot of sudden demands put on her to get up and perform at a moment's notice. Part of the reason she gets drawn into Sherlock's world, though, is that now that she's sober, she's realizing that she needs work that's more intellectually and personally challenging. So this story is among other things the story of Harry's starting to build a life around her sobriety instead of around her alcoholism. 
> 
> Harry's ringtone is the opening lines of Elvis Costello's ["Welcome To The Working Week."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSRg9GPfFgE)


	2. A GAME OF CHESS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started adding illustrations. There's one at the end of this chapter. It's a spoiler, so don't jump down there till you've read it.

II. A GAME OF CHESS

John scrambled out of the cab first. He watched Sherlock dismount, then lean in the window to pay the driver. He wouldn’t call Sherlock graceful, exactly. But the way his curls bobbed as he jumped onto the curb, the way his head turned as he scanned the vicinity, the way his hands jammed themselves into the pockets of that coat—every movement of his body stirred echoes now, shadow sensations that flickered along a ghostly nervous system.

Noticing the seam up the back of Sherlock’s coat chilled all of that. That coat had finally been sent back to 221B after the conclusion of the inquest on Moriarty’s death. John had wanted to burn it. Sherlock took it to the drycleaners and had it mended.

“Quickly, John,” said Sherlock, loping up the street toward the market. “It looks as if the vendors are beginning to pack up.”

John fell into step beside him. “So what’s the plan? We walk up and say hello, how are you, I’d like the Sapphire Chicken Special and by the way could we have a pound and a half of raw opium, please?”

“Not quite,” Sherlock said. “You will engage them in conversation, and I will inspect their wares unobserved. Here.” Sherlock stopped, unwound his scarf, and draped it around John’s neck. “If you pull it up to your chin it will make you slightly more incognito.”

“If you ever want to be incognito again you need a new coat.”

“Let’s not have that conversation again, John. The fifty-third time will not be the charm.”

John let Sherlock wind the scarf around his throat. From the way Sherlock’s fingertips grazed the skin of his face, and from the dark gleam in Sherlock’s eyes, John conceived the idea that this moment was not entirely about the case at hand.

“There,” said Sherlock, stepping back and dropping his hands. “It conceals the shape of your jaw, and that’s something. Onward!”

Sherlock let John bustle ahead of him. John passed under the banner at the entrance to the market, wandering aimlessly for a bit before drifting, as if by chance, over to the Kingfisher Farms stall. The chickens were sold out; at the back he could see the wheeled rack and the metal hooks where they once hung. A nearly-pubescent boy in a black T-shirt printed with an image of Gandalf was squatting down near the back, packing sausages into an insulated box half-filled with ice. The mother was not in evidence. The person who came to stand behind the nearly-bare wooden table in the front was a girl of about eighteen. Maybe it was the Gandalf T-shirt, but looking at her, John couldn’t help thinking of Liv Tyler. Dark wavy hair cascading past her shoulders, naturally pink cheeks, long dark full lashes, and a just-about-ripe body. There was even something vaguely medieval about her white peasant blouse, and the tapestry bag she had slung over one shoulder.

“Can I help you with something?” she said, looking up at him from under her lashes in a way that made John’s heart quiver.

“Yes,” he said, after that embarrassing initial hesitation. “I mean maybe. I have a friend who recommended your poultry very highly, but I see I’m too late.”

In his peripheral vision John could see a slow-moving darkish blur that might be Sherlock. He fancied there was also a kind of blur moving in toward the boy and the cooler at the back, but at the moment he was watching the girl bite her lip gently as her face assumed a charming expression of regret.

“I’m sorry, it’s true,” she said, in an accent that was curiously hard to place. “The chickens always go early. They just fly out of the stall. So to speak.”

She giggled at her own joke. John laughed right along.

“Well, I’ll know to come here early next week. Maybe then you could help me choose one.”

He smiled in what he hoped was a charming-not-creepy way. She smiled back.

“Oh, my little brother always helps Mum with the poultry. He loves those birds, alive or dead. I’m not sure he can’t communicate with them.”

John glanced in the boy’s direction. The boy had faded right back to the edge of the market, where he was talking, quite forcefully, to a taller, thinner, somewhat older person. Hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman. Men’s trousers, oversized, cinched at the waist with a broad leather belt that bore an enormous silver buckle; lace-up black Army-issue boots; a plain button-down shirt, black and white pinstriped, open at the neck and rolled up at the sleeves. Long or short, the hair was concealed by an enormous, floppy, blue-and-white-striped knitted hat.

“So…miss…?”

“Jeanie,” she said.

“Jeanie.” John said. “Do you grant wishes?”

She smiled.

“Heard that one before,” John ventured.

Jeanie nodded.

“So what’s your specialty, then, if it’s not the birds?” John resumed. “What do you help your mum with?”

“Mostly the fruit and veg,” she said. “Oh, and the flowers and herbs too, now. We’re fresh out of hyacinths, but there are some beautiful annuals in our greenhouse, and next week…”

The girl’s head tilted slightly to one side. Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened in a gasp.

“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re Dr. Watson! You are, aren’t you?”

John froze.

She clasped her hands together in glee. “I knew it! I _love_ your blog!”

“You do?” John said, wishing he could sound clever.

“Oh, it was so _awful_ when Sherlock was dead! I cried when I read your post about it. I was so worried when you didn’t post for a whole two weeks and now he’s back! You must be so happy!” she squealed, nearly dancing with excitement. “Oh, I’m so sorry we don’t have a chicken for you. But maybe Sherlock would like—no, we’re out of that too. I—wait. Pictures. You don’t mind if I take a picture, do you? Oh God. George has my phone. Don’t go anywhere. George! GEORGE! Look who’s here!”

She turned around, looking for the boy. Not finding him, she kept looking, her feet still doing that little dance of joy. She spotted George, in his Gandalf shirt, out at the edge of the parking lot. And she spotted the person George was talking to—or rather, at this moment, arguing with.

John actually felt Jeanie’s interest in him die. She stared, apparently in shock, at the two figures by the edge of the lot. Then she said, without looking back at John, “I’m afraid we’re closed. Sorry. Goodbye.”

The girl began moving toward the pair at the edge of the market, as if afraid of startling them. The blur in John’s peripheral vision began moving too. Sure enough, it was Sherlock, also moving slowly, trying to stay out of the girl’s sight line.

George looked in their direction. The other person did too. A pale face with large, dark eyes turned from the girl, to John, to Sherlock.

John saw the narrow chest under that men’s shirt fill with one deep breath. And then the person in the knitted hat was off and running.

Sherlock exploded after...him or her. John followed as fast as he could. Behind him he could hear Jeanie shouting, “No! Don't go! Wait! Ryder, WAIT!”

Through a narrow pathway between two enormous industrial buildings and onto the pavement of a nearly deserted street. The burn in John’s lungs was nowhere near as painful as the fact that he couldn’t narrow Sherlock’s lead. Longer legs, leaner muscle—Sherlock was always faster. Unless he wanted to be caught.

All right, John, focus.

The door to one of the massive buildings that squatted along this side of the street opened. The fugitive disappeared into it. Sherlock was in a moment afterward. They had, John realized when he followed them in, run into a loading dock. The door to the loading area, which must have been up a moment earlier, was on its way down. Their quarry raced toward the rapidly shrinking area between the descending door and the concrete dock. With about two feet of daylight left, that narrow body hit the concrete and rolled under the door. The blue and white hat fell off.

Sherlock dove for it. Before he could grab it, a skinny arm snaked through the gap. The bony hand closed on the cap just as Sherlock got a grip on it. Sherlock’s arm was jerked through the gap between the door and the floor, which was now about six inches wide.  

“Sherlock!” John shouted. “Sherlock, _let go!_ It’ll break your arm!”

Loud beeping sounds burst out from the small black boxes mounted at the base of the doorway. The door came to a shuddering halt, two inches above Sherlock’s forearm.

With a grunt and a grimace, Sherlock retracted his arm. His hand was empty.

“These safety features are mandatory on automatic doors now, John,” Sherlock said, acidly.

“Well…you _would_ have broken your arm, if…”

Sherlock sprang to his feet. He dashed up and down the sides of the dock looking for the opening mechanism. At last, he found the right touchplate and smote it with both hands. The door began ascending, one length of steel at a time. But on the other side, now, there was only daylight.

“Damn,” Sherlock spat. “Back to the stall. Quick.”

Lungs still burning, John ran after him. He stopped in the middle of the lot, bewildered. Finally he realized that the stall was no longer there. Where Kingfisher Farms had once pitched its tent, there was only a few leaves drifting over a square of asphalt. Sherlock crouched in the middle of it, running his hands along the pavement. All they found was one round, red, hard capsule. The last of the poppy heads.

“Pity,” John said. “I was hoping Jeanie might still be here. She might have been helpful. We were rather getting on.”

“So I observed.”

Sherlock turned, thrusting the poppy head into one pocket. Without another word he began stalking toward the street.

John trotted after him, reaching the kerb just as the cab pulled up. Sherlock opened the door, jumped in, and then nearly closed the door on John.

John batted Sherlock’s arm away, swung the door open, and jumped in after him. Sherlock shoved himself as far onto the opposite end of the seat as he could.

“So.” John belted himself in. “Where are we going?”

Sherlock turned away, facing out the window.

“221B Baker Street,” John called through the partition.

The driver threw the car into gear. Sherlock remained silent.

“What. What have I done.”

Sherlock shook his head.

“You told me to engage them in conversation. That’s what I did.”

A snide remark would have been better than more silence.

John began unwinding the scarf, somewhat reluctantly, from around his neck.

“By the way,” he said, “this was no help at all. She recognized me.”

Sherlock snatched the scarf out of John’s hand and coiled it around his own neck, rather savagely.

“Tell me what the problem is, Sherlock.”

“What problem?” Sherlock said. “It’s not a problem. I predicted it. I expected it. I’m braced for it. Since I’ve known you the longest you’ve gone without a girlfriend is five weeks. You’re due.”

John opened his mouth, but all that came through was a noise of outrage.

“I would recommend, however,” Sherlock said bitterly, “that you stay within your own age range, and that you not go to bed with a woman who’s involved in an ongoing investigation. For purely practical reasons.”

“Sherlock,” John said. “I was flirting with her. To keep her talking. That’s all. Christ almighty.”

Sherlock let out a hiss, then subsided into silence. The streets went by, and the silence got deeper and more angry.

“Speak to me, Sherlock,” John finally said. “Don’t just…I didn’t think you’d take it that way. I mean I can’t know, can I? We don’t talk about…this thing. With us. Ever. Even something fucking basic, like, do we carry on sleeping with other people or do we not. I assumed not. You thought…what? I have no idea. Which is fucked up, but typical. You have to speak to me. I do not read minds. _Your_ mind least of all. I _never_ know what you are thinking. What _are_ you thinking?”

More silence.

“I mean to you, is this thing a relationship? Or what is it? What do _you_ think is going on here? Would you for once tell me what you’re thinking?”

Sherlock twisted around in his seat. His stare, when John met it, was electric.

“I think that for a man who talks as much as you do it’s remarkable how you manage to avoid certain words,” Sherlock spat. “I think that I am not the reason that we never talk about what you persist in referring to as _this thing_. I think the reason we don’t talk about it is that the _last_ person with whom you were in the habit of exchanging a certain terrifying trio of monosyllabic words died suddenly and horribly and in a way that nearly cost you somebody else that you loved. Well, you didn’t kill her by saying it, John. It wouldn’t kill me. It wouldn’t kill you either.”

John’s heart was beating too fast. Not in the good way. In the way that reminded him of Afghanistan.

“It never mattered to me before that you became a blithering idiot in the presence of any attractive woman who notices you,” Sherlock went on. “I thought it was funny. It often came in handy, when I needed to distract you. You behaved, when speaking to Jeanie, exactly as you always have in that situation. But it isn’t funny to me now. Deduction: _this thing_ has changed me. But it has not changed you.”

 John looked out his own cab window, burning with slow anger.

“That is because,” John said, slowly, “you didn’t love me until after you died. Whereas I loved you before. Long before.”

The cab came to a halt.

John yanked the door open. Sherlock paid the driver. They stood together on the kerb, watching it drive off, side by side, neither wanting to be the first to look at each other.

“Jeannette knew it,” John finally said. “Sarah knew it. They all knew. I liked them; I liked their liking me; I liked the sex. I hope they liked it too. But they knew who I loved.”

He felt Sherlock’s eyes on him. John turned. The angry spark in Sherlock’s eyes had burned out, leaving behind something sad.

John lifted a hand toward Sherlock’s face, slowly, and touched the curls trembling over Sherlock’s pale forehead.

“I’m glad this…thing…has happened,” John said. “But I would always have loved you, regardless.”

Sherlock’s face was, for a moment, transfigured by a half-smile. Then it returned to its habitual state.

“Well done, John,” Sherlock said. “You’ve managed to use the verb in nearly every tense but the present. Never mind. Time enough.”

Before John could protest, Sherlock linked arms with him and began piloting him toward the entrance to 221B.

“So what now?” John said.

“In between my fits of petty jealousy,” Sherlock said, as they tramped up the stairs, “I did manage to pocket a representative sample of the flora on and around that stall. I have a hunch that some of it will turn out to be rather special. I will subject our samples to various experiments, John, while you attempt to identify them. Until we get more data, it’s all we can do. If only I hadn’t let go of that hat.”

Sherlock opened the door, pulled another plastic bag out of his coat pocket, and threw it on the table. He took off the coat and hung it up. John took off his jacket. Sherlock flung himself onto the couch. When John came over, Sherlock lifted his legs up; John sat, and Sherlock replaced his feet in John’s lap. This was how they sat on that couch, now. One of the little sequences that made up the choreography of _this thing._

“I don’t see what you could hope to get out of that hat,” John said. “Unless maybe the name and address of this person are written on the tag in laundry marker.”

“A hat is a very personal item, John,” Sherlock said. “Perhaps the only accessory that speaks more eloquently of its owner is the purse, and our friend from the market surely doesn’t carry one. Absent the hat, all we can say for certain about the person we pursued today—let us call him or her Indiana—“

“Ah,” John remarked. “I see what you did there.”

“Indiana is between the ages of twenty and thirty, with the agility of a gymnast and the speed and endurance of a track star. It is also clear that your girlfriend—“

“Sherlock—“

“Judging by her reaction to this person’s arrival, it is clear that the lovely and evidently sentimental Jeanie must know our fleet-footed friend. So must our prepubescent Tolkein enthusiast. I was watching young George while you were…otherwise occupied…”

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock. What do you want from me? Never to look at a woman again?”

“You can look,” Sherlock said, “and I can mock. Little George had words with our mystery person; but at no point did he show fear, and at no point did the other appear to be menacing him.”

Sherlock laid his head back on the armrest of the sofa and looked up at the ceiling.

After a moment, Sherlock said, “Who are you texting?”

John looked up from his mobile. “Just Harry. She did ask us to keep her posted.”

“How charming, the filial affection,” Sherlock murmured, closing his eyes. “They should make a reality show about you two. The Real Watsons of London. It would warm the flintiest of hearts. Even the late lamented Moriarty might shed a tear.”

John extended his body along the couch, covering Sherlock’s. Sherlock’s eyes opened. John looked into them from not very far away, and said softly, “You don’t know the first thing about my family.”

“I know why your father left and why your mother died,” Sherlock said, slipping his hands around John’s shoulders.

“So you know the crises. The devil is in the day to day.”

Sherlock drew John to him.

“You know even less about my family,” Sherlock said.

“Must be we like it that way.”

Sherlock moved his mouth toward the kiss.

*             *             *

“So he kissed you,” said Jones, leaning forward in his chair. “Did you enjoy it?”

Molly glanced at Harry. Harry said, “My client declines to answer.”

“Your client can speak for herself,” said Jones. “Did you enjoy it? Was it unwelcome?”

Molly said, faintly, “It wasn’t unwelcome.”

“Molly,” Harry whispered.

“So you did enjoy it,” Jones pressed.

“I…I don’t know…”

“You don’t _know_?”

“It all happened so fast…I…”

“He was aggressive, then?”

Harry broke in. “Detective Inspector, this line of questioning is completely irrelevant to the incident under investigation.”

“Object away,” said Jones. “We’re not in court. And your client is a sensible girl who understands the value of voluntary cooperation. Now, my girl,” he said, with a kindly smile, “there’s no need to be afraid. You can tell me the truth. Lestrade is a police officer but he’s not above the law. If you didn’t consent—“

“It was my idea!” Molly said, quickly.

Harry kicked her under the table. Molly rushed onward.

 “It wasn’t like that. I consented. It was my idea.”

“So what exactly is it that you consented to, Molly?” Jones said, softly. “It’s all right. Nobody’s judging.”

“Well…I mean…going upstairs…and…”

“Upstairs.”

“Yes.”

“Upstairs to where?”

“To…my…”

Harry slammed her briefcase closed and stood up, sending the swivel chair rolling backward against the wall.

“Detective Inspector, where’s the nearest women’s loo in this building?”

“End of the hall on the right,” said Jones.

“Thank you. My client is exercising her right to a loo break. We will return shortly. Come on Molly.”

“But—“ Molly began.

“Come _on_ , Molly!”

“Thank you, Molly said to Jones, with a little smile.

“Anything for a lady,” said Jones.

Harry walked Molly down the hall, pushed the loo door open, almost shoved Molly in, and then inspected the stalls one by one. There was no one else in the room.

“Molly,” Harry whispered furiously. “You have to stop answering his questions.”

“But I can’t let him think those things about Greg. It wasn’t his fault, it was my idea, I wanted something to happen, I was the one who—“

“It’s a trick, Molly,” Harry said, raising her voice. “He’s making you think he’s trying to incriminate Greg to get you to try to incriminate yourself.”

“But what does it matter? Why is it incriminating? Neither of us killed her. The autopsy results will show that she was poisoned, and before that starved and tortured for weeks--”

“Oh God, Molly, listen to me,” Harry said, in a fever of desperation. “This man is not Sherlock, he’s not Greg. To him solving a case does not mean finding out who committed the murder, it means getting someone convicted for it. He looks at a dead naked woman and he thinks sex crime and he looks at a married man—“

“He and Wendy are separated.”

“No jury will care. He looks at a married man spending the night at a young woman’s house and he thinks he thinks aha, illicit affair, that’s my narrative. He is not asking these questions because he’s looking for clues, Molly. He is trying to establish a context in which your killing a strange woman would make sense. The first thing he thinks he needs to do is prove that you’re promiscuous because that will make the jury think you’re unhealthy and unbalanced and therefore more likely to be immoral and/or insane enough to kill someone without having a material reason for it. And the sad fucking thing, Molly, is that even though this is the twenty-first century, nine out of ten jurors will still swallow that tripe. So _do not answer any more questions_ about what you did with Greg or who initiated it or whether you enjoyed it.”

Molly nodded. Her throat hurt and tears were coming out of her eyes. She knew it was going badly. She was disappointing Harry and Greg and Sherlock too once he found out and—

She felt Harry’s hand on her shoulder.

“Molly. Molly, look at me. Please. I’m not angry.”

Molly looked up. Harry’s eyes were sad.

“You can’t help it, can you,” Harry said.  

Molly shook her head. “I can’t. I know I shouldn’t answer but I can’t seem to stop myself.”

“You’ve always tried so hard to do what people expect of you,” said Harry. “And they expect so much.”

Molly nodded, vexed that she was still crying.

“And it’s hard to openly defy the person in charge. But to get Sherlock into hiding you faked a suicide, forged seven documents and bribed four government employees. You must have a rebel in there somewhere.”

Molly slid down the wall and huddled up in the corner. It was so hard to explain. It hadn’t been scary, it hadn’t been hard, she had loved doing it. Not the forgery and the bribing—that felt horrible—but playing that trick with Moriarty’s body up on the roof. There was something exhilarating about sharing Sherlock’s danger, feeling the same adrenaline as their hands scrambled frantically to get the mask on him, the knee braces, the IV stand—so much to be done in so short a time. Barely speaking but knowing each other’s minds all the same, working together against the clock. Knowing how much he needed her made her glow all over. Those first two days when he was hiding in the basement of St. Bart’s, and she brought him food and gave him her socks…they were the happiest days of her adult life.

“But that was for Sherlock,” Molly said. “He needed my help. I had to.”

Harry crouched down and stared at her, as if she were trying to burn something into Molly’s brain.

“I know Sherlock means a lot to you,” Harry said quietly. “I know Greg means…something to you. But you matter too, Molly. You are as important as they are. You are the one in danger here, and you need to protect yourself. Stand up for yourself the way you would stand up for one of them.”

Molly nodded, but her heart was not in it. Harry saw that.

“All right, let’s try this,” said Harry. “Repeat after me. ‘That is none of your business.’”

“That is none of your business,” Molly said, faintly.

“Again. ‘That is none of your business.’”

“That is none of your business,” Molly said, a little louder.

Harry jumped to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Molly. “What were your intentions toward Detective Inspector Lestrade, Ms. Hooper?”

Molly leapt up and yelled it into her face. “That is none of your business!”  

“Did you expect to have sex with him?”

“None of your business!”  Molly’s voice sounded so loud, bouncing off the tiles. But she kind of liked it.

“Were you thinking that after a night of wild animalistic passion he might just fall in love with you?”

“None of your business!” Molly shouted.

“Or was he just one of the thousands of men who have passed through that palace of perversion you call a garden apartment?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“I think it fucking is my business!”

“Well it’s not your fucking business!”

“I can make it my fucking business!”

“No you fucking can’t!”

“Why the fuck can’t I?”

“Because it’s not your fucking business!”

“Whose fucking business is it then?”

“It’s my fucking business!”

“Whose fucking business is it?”

“MY fucking business!”

“ _Whose_ fucking business?”

“MY fucking business!”

And suddenly they were both chanting it together, call and response, at the top of their lungs, into each other’s faces. “Whose fucking business?” “MY fucking business!”

Molly was the first to burst out laughing. Then Harry caught it.

“Well,” Harry said, after the laughter subsided. “Now I really do have to pee. You might want to avail yourself too,” Harry said, opening a stall door. “We could be in there all day.”

“Whether I want a pee is my fucking business!” Molly said.

Molly smiled, rather uncertainly. Harry’s answering smile was broad and sunny and it made Molly think that maybe things would be all right.

“I think we’re ready,” Harry said.

*             *             *             *

John was supposed to be Googling for images of herbs used in witchcraft, voodoo, folk medicine, aphrodisiacs, as-yet-unlicensed pharmaceuticals…any semi- or fully-illicit activity, Sherlock said, where fresh exotic plant life might be required. And John was, mostly, doing that, as he slouched on the sofa in his dressing gown. Sherlock sat behind the microscope, wearing nothing but a pair of latex gloves—medical grade, proper fit proper snap—and a pair of underpants.

John thought about taking a peek at one of his favorite semilegal sites. But of course Sherlock would find it in the browsing history.

Well, so what. Really. John might be permanently entangled with a lunatic genius who seemed to be discovering a jealous streak; but he was still a British citizen and a free man.

There. Nothing wrong with a healthy, young, and fairly randy man taking a few moments out of the day to have a look at some harmless…

It wasn’t the same.

Well, John observed as he attempted to analyze this development, that actually depended on which part of him was responding to the survey. His privates reported no significant changes. Ready for action as always. It was the brain, mainly. Everything seemed to be overlaid with the mist of nostalgia. Ah, tits, he could hear his brain saying. How I shall miss them. Of course I never met an actual woman with tits quite like these.

No matter, said his privates. We can dream, can’t we? No harm in dreaming.

Oh look, said his heart. A piece of glass lit up with multicolored pixels which the eye at the correct distance will resolve into a photoshopped image of the awkwardly posed naked body of a woman who probably lives in Uzbekistan. Bitch, please. If you want me to participate in this bracing little debate about the fluidity of human sexuality, John, why don’t you find me some pictures of Mary.

Something caught in John’s throat. He closed the window. Back to the world of herbs.

“Curious,” Sherlock murmured.

“What?” John said, eagerly. “What’s curious?”

Sherlock was holding up a strip of test paper that had turned green.

“I’ve been running a chemical analysis on the fluid in the bird’s crop,” Sherlock said. “I thought there was something off about the color. And now,” he said, waving the green-streaked slip of paper, “that fluid has tested positive for the presence of scopolamine.”

“Scopolamine!” John exclaimed.

“Well, I tested for it because the first thing I thought of that might explain the color would be some type of bluish berry. Deadly nightshade, or, as it is sometimes called, belladonna—“

“Yes, I know what nightshade is,” John said. “And I know it contains scopolamine, not to mention atropine, and various other alkaloid poisons. But if that chicken has a bellyful of scopolamine, shouldn't it be dead?”

“It is dead, John.”

“I mean…”

“Ah. No. You see, the bluish tinge is present only in the crop. The crop holds food the bird has eaten to be digested later. The nightshade berries, if we accept the hypothesis that they are responsible for the scopolamine, were still waiting in the crop to be digested. Being softer than everything else in the bird’s diet they were reduced to mush in there; but they hadn’t gone through the digestive tract.”

“Unlucky chicken,” John mused, looking over Sherlock’s shoulder. “Poisoned and then butchered. But I suppose all chickens are unlucky. Where on earth did the bird pick it up? If I was raising chickens _and_ deadly nightshade I think I might house them at opposite ends of the property.”

“That is the curious thing,” Sherlock said, his eyes brightening. “They’re free range, I’m sure they get into all sorts of things. But. It’s April. Nightshade is just about at the flowering stage now. The berries don’t appear until summer. So this chicken cannot have come by these berries just lying about the farm.”

John draped an arm over one of Sherlock’s bare shoulders, and ran his fingers idly across Sherlock’s chest. The touch seemed to spark something.

“Jeanie,” John said. “She mentioned they had a greenhouse.”

“There,” Sherlock said, his hands flying into the air. “That’s it, John. They have a greenhouse where they’re forcing the plants. Maybe that’s where they’re growing the opium too. And the chicken either got into the greenhouse somehow…or else someone, for reasons unknown, deliberately fed the poor thing a nightshade and opium cocktail just before killing it.”

John pulled out his mobile.

“What?” Sherlock said.

“I just think Harry should know that her delicious chicken is poisoned,” John said.

He sent the text. There had been no reply to the previous one. This client was keeping her very busy.

Sherlock looked back at the test paper. “Perhaps this was some sort of experiment. Maybe little George is an aspiring scientist. Perhaps he’s curious about how atropine affects the avian brain. He’s the one who has the most contact with the birds, according to your dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair.”

John decided to ignore that. “Who knows,” he said. “Maybe the chicken was pregnant.”

Sherlock, of course, took it seriously. “I don’t follow.”

“It’s a joke, Sherlock,” John said. “Scopolamine and opiates interact in some interesting ways. Before epidurals, they used to give women who were in labor an anaesthetic based on the scopolamine-opiate interaction. It was called ‘twilight sleep.’”

“Sounds like a horrible young adult novel,” Sherlock said.

“It does, doesn’t it.”

“What does ‘twilight sleep’ do?”

“It puts the patient in a kind of altered state,” John said. “She’s conscious and responsive, but not fully aware of what’s going on. The name must have been a marketing ploy because it’s completely inaccurate. For a lot of women the experience wasn’t calm at all. Patients on this stuff would have hallucinations, they'd scream, rave, carry on, have to be restrained…”

“So in what sense could this be said to be an anaesthetic?” Sherlock said.

“Well, the patient had no memory of it afterwards. From her point of view, she’s pregnant, she takes this stuff, and then all of a sudden she’s been wheeled off to the nursery with the baby in her arms. That is part of the point of a general anaesthetic. That the patient doesn’t remember.”

“The rest of the point, presumably, being that the patient is unconscious and inert,” Sherlock said, returning to the microscope.

“Well, yes, twilight sleep did fall short there. But you see unless it’s a cesarean, the woman does have to be conscious to give birth. This is the whole dilemma of anaesthesia and obstetrics. Mary was hoping one day to get a government grant for a study--”

Sherlock’s head snapped up. His eyes met John’s. John’s own body was trembling with such panic that he could make no sense of Sherlock’s reaction. All he knew for certain was that Sherlock had registered, with something of a shock, the fact that this was the first time that John had ever spoken to Sherlock about Mary—or even spoken her name in his presence.

“Yes, John,” Sherlock said. “A study about…?”

He opened his mouth. It shut itself. He couldn’t make it open again. He could barely breathe. He wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t even do that. His stomach was shuddering and his legs were rubber.

“John?” Sherlock said.

“I can’t…I don’t…I…I’m just going to…go…”

With an effort, John got his legs moving. They carried him into the bathroom. He didn’t turn the light on. He closed the door, crouched on the toilet seat, and buried his head in his hands. His body continued to shudder. He had spent hours like this, in the days following the fall. And in his hospital room, once he was able to walk again. And in the flat he and Mary had once lived in together, after the funeral.

He would wait. These fits passed. They felt like hell, but he survived them. He’d be right as rain in a few minutes.

Time passed, in the darkness. John was afraid at first that Sherlock might try to come in and comfort him. But he remained in the living area, no doubt still at the microscope, looking for the solution to a completely different problem.

*             *             *

The drawer slid out of the wall, stopping with a clang. Molly reached over and unzipped the body bag. She hadn’t known exactly how it would feel to look at her face again, after the garden. In the event, what she mostly felt was irritation.

“Nobody’s touched her,” Molly said. “They just shoved her in and forgot about her. I know it’s the weekend. But really.”

Lestrade, from the other side of the body, said, “So…Molly…how irregular _is_ this? Am I getting you into more trouble?”

Somehow, after the conclusion of her interview with Detective Inspector Jones, that question held very little terror for Molly. She had done it. She had stopped answering the questions. He got madder and madder and madder and Harry just kept smiling at him and Molly started smiling at him too, and in the end he nearly had an apopleptic fit right there in front of them. It felt good, Harry congratulating her out in the hall, saying she ought to get some kind of Most Improved award. Being in trouble was more fun than she’d thought it might be. She might kind of be getting to enjoy some of it.

Molly shook her head. Her eyes were still following the zipper, watching the rest of the body appear.

 “Nobody’s bothered yet. Nobody will bother us now. We’ll just put her back exactly the way we found her.”

“You said she was poisoned,” Lestrade prompted.

“You see the blue stains on her lips,” Molly said. “Nightshade berries are dark blue. And the dilated pupils, nightshade does that. It’s the atropine. Women used to put the juice in their eyes, to make them dilate. They thought it was more beautiful. That’s why in Italian it’s called belladonna.”

Lestrade nodded attentively. Still, Molly thought she should probably stop going on about it. Nobody cared about these things. Except for Sherlock.

Molly’s latex-sheathed fingers opened the mouth gently. “The mucuous membranes show evidence of dehydration.” She closed the mouth, and pointed to a dried track running from one corner of her mouth toward the chin. “The dirt stuck to this because it was still wet. Without scraping it and testing it we can’t know but it’s probably vomit. If we…here…”

Molly lifted one of the body’s knees, looked down the back of the thigh. A wide, cracking, brown smear, dusted with black dirt.

“I thought so,” she said. “Diarrhoea too, it’s one of the symptoms of nightshade poisoning. I—I’m sorry,” Molly said, as she dropped the corpse’s leg abruptly. “This isn’t very…nice...”

“It’s all right,” Lestrade said, with a half-smile. “I’ve seen worse.”

Molly liked the smile so much she kept looking for a moment.

“Yes,” she said. “You have, haven’t you.”

“What are the other symptoms?” Lestrade said.

“Well…it’s got a lot of powerful alkaloids in it, they act on the nerves, they paralyze you eventually. But first there are the hallucinations. The victims get very disoriented. Plus because of the dilation of the pupils they have blurred vision.”

Lestrade looked thoughtfully down at the corpse’s staring eyes.

“I’ve been wondering…I’m sure you’ve been wondering about this too…Jones isn’t wondering about it, but of course he’s an ass…”

Molly tried to stifle a giggle. It came out like a squeak.

“What I’ve been wondering is…your place is set back from the street a bit, right, because it’s a big street and it’s busy and well-lit. It’s all residential where you are, but a few blocks east, where she was coming from, it shifts to retail. There’s a twenty-four hour Spar in that block. She must have passed it. And even late, it’s Friday, there must have been lights in some of the windows. Why doesn’t she ask someone for help? She could go into the Spar, she could bang on someone’s door. She’s panicking, of course; but that would only make her look more desperately for help. But if you’re right about the nightshade, it makes sense. If she’s got blurred vision and she’s hallucinating, maybe she doesn’t even see that Spar, or maybe she thinks it’s something else. Maybe she’s too paranoid to ask for help. Maybe to her the lit up windows look like…alien spaceships, or something, yeah?”

Molly realized with a start that he was asking her for confirmation.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes, it could be.”

“She’s still partly lucid part of the way,” Lestrade went on, moving down toward the corpse’s feet. “I mean look at her feet, she couldn’t have run much farther. So she gets off the busy street, where she’s visible to whoever’s chasing her, and out of her pursuer’s sight line. Then she goes through your gate, so if he turns after her—I’m just assuming it’s a he, you know it usually is—“

Molly nodded. “Yes. Usually.”

“—if he turns after her he won’t see her ahead of him. What makes no sense is her digging herself into your hyacinth bed. But, again, hallucinations explain that. Maybe they looked like something else to her.”

“Or maybe she just really likes hyacinths.”

“It could be both,” Molly said, startling herself.

“Yeah?” Lestrade said, encouragingly.

“She likes hyacinths, she has positive…associations with them, so in her hallucination, they become protectors. Or something.”

“So there we are,” Lestrade said. “Now we know something about the victim. Maybe.” He glanced up at the face. “We’ll call her the Hyacinth Girl.”

“Is that what you do, nickname the corpses that don’t have names?”

Lestrade put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Yeah, some of us. Sherlock does it too. Even sometimes when you do know the real name, you give them a kind of a case name. It’s…you know, it’s very odd, this getting to know a person after she’s dead. It’s like everyone is two people, really, one before death and one after. Long as the case is open, the corpse has a…well…a kind of a life, to me, anyway. There’s a person that she was, before she was dead. I’m never going to know that person, though I hope soon I’ll know a lot more _about_ that person. But…I mean I guess this will sound creepy to you, and I guess it kind of is. Even dead, she is still, to me, a sort of a person. She needs help. She’ll never know what I’m doing for her, of course. But this…body…it demands…something. Because it was human once. Because even now, it’s not entirely _not_ human. You want closure for the families, justice done, all that, of course. But I don’t know. I don’t understand it really. I do feel as if I’m working _for her._ As if there’s something I can still do for her. Even though nobody was there to help the person she was _before_. That moment before death, I think, each one of them must feel utterly forsaken by God and the whole of the human race. I wasn’t there to stop the pain. But I feel like…if no one ever solves the case…that the pain and the loneliness will go on _forever_. And that I can stop. Maybe. Sometimes. With help.”

He looked up at Molly, his eyebrows drawn together, his eyes as puzzled by this as they had ever been by any deranged serial killer.

“Sorry,” Lestrade said. “Talking too much. And all of it mad.”

“No,” Molly said, lifting her hands. “No, no, it’s not mad. I…I feel the same way. Sort of the same way. I mean there isn’t much actually I can do for them. But…it’s not mad. It’s not creepy. I understand.”

Lestrade’s forehead relaxed. He almost smiled. Then he looked away.

“Yeah, well, so, the feet,” he said.

Molly nodded, lifting one of them and turning it slowly in the light.

“Soil stuck to them because of the blood,” he said. “Soles scraped practically right off. A long time running on a paved surface. Poor woman. If she’d even had shoes.”

“Mightn’t have helped,” Molly said. “You can see, the shape of the feet…she wore heels. High heels, most of the time. It shortens the Achilles tendon and it kind of deforms the bones a bit.”

Something was going on in Lestrade’s mind.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait wait wait.”

“Sorry?” Molly said, as the foot dangled in midair.

“Vomit, diarrhoea, and you say she wore heels most of the time,” Lestrade said, his voice getting faster and louder. “I’ve been thinking all along, the weirdest thing about this is that a naked woman could run as far as she must have run down a street that busy without anyone noticing her. Even in the small hours of the morning. But if she was wearing heels, she’d have kicked them off so she could run better. If she was retching and shitting, well, someone thinking clearly would just put up with it and keep running, but she was hallucinating. Maybe she ripped the clothes off when they got soiled, maybe she couldn’t stand how it felt.”

Molly dropped the foot. She jumped a little when it clanged back onto the drawer.

“She wasn’t naked when she started out,” Molly said. And then, with a little leap of her hands, “Oh! The symptoms…nightshade poisoning, sometimes the symptoms don’t show up for hours. There might not even have been anyone chasing her. She might have…felt ill, and the hallucinations started, and she _thought_ someone was after her, and she ran. Maybe that’s why nobody stopped to help. They saw her running, and at first she was clothed, and there was no one chasing her, and they thought, well, she’s in a hurry or something.”

Lestrade was stroking his jaw thoughtfully with one hand.

“The thing is, Molly,” he said, “I mean now I see her up close, you were right about her being starved. And there are these marks on the wrists here,” he said. “Rope burns.”

Molly’s eyes flicked back to the Hyacinth Girl’s face. She turned it to one side. The light gleamed on the skin. Standing out against that light was a small strip of dried residue, just in front of her right ear. Now she’d seen it, she could see other irregular tiny patches of the same dried residue, in a wide band leading toward the mouth.

“Oh God,” Lestrade said. “Adhesive tape.”

Molly swallowed something in her throat.

“So,” Lestrade said. “She was being held against her will. She escaped, somehow—but only after whoever it was had poisoned her.”

“Nightshade berries are beautiful,” Molly said, quietly. “In my toxicology course they brought some in. They’re like blueberries only they have this almost silver sheen to them. If you’d been starved, if someone offered you…or if you found…nightshade berries, you’d eat them.”

“She escapes in nothing but her clothes,” Lestrade said. “She ditches the shoes almost immediately. She needs to move fast and be silent. On pavement heels make noise and in grass or dirt they slow you down. The clothes she tears off later, after the worst of the symptoms have started.” He glanced back at the feet. “Layers of dirt caked on the feet. The soil would probably tell the whole story, if you could sort out which dirt came from where.” He sighed. “Pity about Sherlock. He’s a demon for the soil analysis. Finding that abandoned sweet factory from that one footprint—“

“I did that,” Molly blurted out.

“Sorry?” Lestrade said.

Molly started backpedaling. “I mean…no. He did it. But I did it too. I helped. I got all the books and I ran all the tests and I isolated half the compounds and I set up the slides and you know it’s not magic what Sherlock does, it’s just chemistry and I know as much chemistry as he does. More.”

“Molly,” said Lestrade slowly, “do you think you could figure out, from the soil samples, where she was running from?”

“I think I could,” Molly said, lifting her chin.

“Except they haven’t taken any yet,” Lestrade said.

Molly went to one of the supply cupboards.

“Molly…you were going to leave her exactly as we found her…”

Molly turned around, pointing a pair of tweezers at Lestrade. Her voice was loud, and shaking.

“That…man,” Molly said. “That…Inspector Jones. He won’t care. He won’t know. We could cut off the feet and put them in bags and carry them away and it wouldn’t matter to him. He’d be happy. No evidence to mess up his ideas. I’ll take _some_ of the soil from _some_ of the sores on _one_ of the feet. Whoever does the forensics will find plenty of what we’ve got. If anyone cares to look.”

Molly pulled up a rolling cart and laid out her tools.

“Evidence tampering,” Lestrade said.

Molly began scraping away at the heel of the right foot. “You let Sherlock take away evidence all the time.”

“But this isn’t my case,” he replied.

“Well it should be,” Molly retorted. “You care, and he doesn’t.”

Lestrade sighed. “Molly, it’ll be inadmissible. We can’t enter it without explaining how we got it, and if the evidence has been accessed without the knowledge and consent of the detective in charge…”

“If you find out where she came from, you won’t need the soil analysis. You’ll have found the crime scene. You can use the evidence there.”

“But as long as Jones has charge of the case…” Lestrade began.

Molly looked up. Lestrade had stopped talking, the better to think.

“But he won’t be for long,” Lestrade said, with something like glee. “It’ll be reassigned come Monday. Whoever gets it, I can work with. Scrape away, Molly,” he said, walking around the end of the drawer to look over her shoulder. “Can I help?”

“Probably best if I do it,” she said. “I’m used to it. But thanks.”

He stayed there, just behind her, watching her work. He wasn’t close enough to touch her. But she could feel him there all the same.

*             *             *

Harry climbed the stairs to the flat, looking at her phone. A text from Molly, thanking her again. Before that, two texts from John. 

“Jesus,” she said, out loud, stopping in the stairwell. “Nightshade _and_ opium?”

Shaking her head, she unlocked the door.

Her adult life, she reflected, could not fairly be called uneventful. There was the accident, the nonstop drama with Clara, the binges, the blackouts, and so on. The chaos of addiction, replaced quite suddenly by the very different chaos of recovery. The divorce.

Still. What she’d done every day, for many years, had changed very little. Get up, manage hangover, go to work, do many different kinds of tasks which were all nevertheless quite familiar and usually tedious, get through it all _nearly_ sober, go home, crack open a bottle and watch all hell break loose.

Then she’d decided to get back into John’s life. And then, the body burning in the frog pond, the arrest, the interrogation, the spectacle of her brother’s naked body entwined with that of another man who she’d thought was dead, her ex-wife shot to death in one of her empty houses, all those other creepy houses that turned out not to be empty after all, Mycroft and the decanter and the teeth.

And foolishly, she had thought maybe that was the end of the weird. But obviously she was wrong. Obviously, Sherlock was a human vortex that sucked all the weirdness drifting through the universe into some kind of improbability hurricane that swept up anyone who got near him. Because now that she was inside the Sherlock Event Horizon, apparently, she couldn’t go and buy a fucking chicken without bringing home a stolen jewel, drugs, and poison. And she couldn’t, apparently, take on a client without being thrown into the middle of a murder investigation.

She put her briefcase on the hall table. Glancing down, she noticed that one of the drawers had been pulled halfway out.

A month ago she would not have noticed that. But now, she felt a kind of cold mist stroke the back of her neck. The very edges of a hurricane headed in her direction.

Standing quite still, she looked the rest of the place over. There were more signs. Drawers ajar in the living room table. The canisters that had been in a neat row on the kitchen counter were snaking in an irregular line through a dusting of flour and sugar. Cupboard doors not quite closed. The bedroom light on, and the bedroom door wide open.

Harry slipped into the kitchen and took the carving knife out of the block. Whoever had rifled her place was probably long gone. But when you were in the midst of the hurricane of weird, it was best to have a contingency plan.

The solar system quilt was rumpled at one end. But at the center, where the sun was, it had been smoothed out. She could see that someone had laid out a series of what looked like oversized playing cards. Four in a vertical row, and then two laid across each other at right angles, right in the center, with four more cards set out around the central cross at the four cardinal points.

A tarot reading. Someone had broken into her flat to do a fucking tarot reading.

As the winds of weird blew stronger, Harry heard a sound from the bathroom. She couldn’t place it at first; a short hiss, and then a series of tiny tiny squeaks.

She slowly approached the door to the bathroom.

There she was. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Oversized dark trousers held onto those boyish hips with a wide belt. Men’s shirt with a narrow pinstripe, tailored just enough you had an impression of the breasts beneath it. A face with high cheekbones, dark brows, taut skin. A sharply cut profile, accentuated by the woman’s short, straight, dark hair…into which, Harry suddenly realized, she was working Harry’s styling mousse, tilting her head this way and that as she studied the effect.

Harry had reached the eye of the hurricane.

For a moment she thought she might have stumbled into a temporal paradox. That the woman in this bathroom was actually her younger self, transported into the future to give her an important message that would avert disaster. Stranger that she was, she did look so familiar.

But in time travel stories, she thought, it’s the older self that goes back in time to visit the younger. Doing it in the other direction wouldn’t make any sense.

Well, neither did this.

“Can I help you?” Harry said.

She had no idea why. It was a mad thing to say in this situation. Certainly the other woman thought so. She spun around, dark eyes wide in terror, body already contracting into a defensive crouch.

“What the fuck are you _doing_ here? Who the fuck are you?”

That was better.

“Where is it?” the woman shouted back.

“Where’s _what_?”

“The blue carbuncle! Where have you hidden it?”

The woman made a motion towards her. Harry held up the knife in her right hand. The woman shrank away from it.

“Just a minute,” Harry said.

With her left hand, Harry extracted the mobile from her pocket. She glanced toward it, scrolling to find John’s number. Stupid touch screens. With the old tactile keyboards you could speed dial without even looking at it.

Something very hard connected with Harry’s right wrist. Knife and phone both flew out of her hands. She crumpled to the floor, cradling in her stinging wrist in her other hand. The boots that had kicked her flashed as the intruder ran out into the bedroom.

Harry scrambled up. The intruder was headed for the open bedroom window--which, as Harry knew, led to the fire escape.

Harry launched herself toward the intruder. She ended up flat on her face on the floor. By the time she reached the window, the intruder was gone.

“Shit!” Harry leaned out the window, but she couldn’t see her. Down the fire escape and off into the darkness before Harry could even haul herself to her feet.

“Jesus, Harry,” she said, returning to the bathroom to pick up the knife. “Just because you’re in the Sherlock Vortex that doesn’t make you a fucking action hero.”

Seriously. During the whole confrontation it had not occurred to her even once to call the actual police. I need to get a grip, she thought. I am not cut out for this.

Straightening up, rather painfully, her eyes picked out something else that was out of place. Something blue and white and hand-knitted. Something floppy and shapeless but definitely, yes, as she approached to take a closer look at it, definitely a hat.

*             *             *

“Hi,” John said, walking back into the living room, rather self-consciously adjusting the belt of his dressing gown.

“Hi,” Sherlock answered, not even looking up from the microscope. Apparently, he hadn’t moved since John left him.

“Anything…happen, while I was…out?”

Sherlock pointed toward John’s phone, which lay on the table by the sofa. “Your text alert went off.”

John picked it up. Media message from Harry.

After a few moments, Sherlock looked up. “Well, what is it?”

“Well,” John said, “it’s a picture of Harry’s bathroom. And the message says, ‘My place. Right now. You bastards.’”

He turned the phone around so Sherlock could see the image.  

“Harry found the hat,” John said.

“The hat found her,” Sherlock replied, leaping happily down from the stool. “Its owner will have overcome her and escaped, of course. But Harry must have surprised young Indiana, or the hat would have left with its owner. That would account for the unwontedly hostile tone of the message. But, like a true Watson, she rises above. Curiosity overcomes resentment. And so she presents to us this priceless jewel, while pretending that she’s chucking a lump of coal. Into your trousers at once, John! Let us hit the trail while it is still warm! Hurry up, please! It's time!”

The thrill of the chase. It shot through his veins, warming him, filling up all the empty dark places he had spent the past…God knew how long…contemplating. Sherlock must have known what was happening to him. John would have thought, two months ago, that he just hadn’t noticed John’s going, or how long he’d been away. Struggling into his jacket, John watched Sherlock throw on that coat, reach for the inevitable scarf. No, John thought. He just left me alone. He knew to do that. I must remember, he thought, grabbing his keys and shoving them into his pocket. Sherlock’s always smarter than you think.

END CHAPTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this were a real episode I would take that scene between Harry and Molly in the bathroom and put it on tumblr. It was so much fun to write and it would be so much fun to watch. The amount of bullshit that women internalize as they grow up about not making trouble, not doing anything that might intimidate or threaten men, and in general not taking up too much space or too much noise is incredible and it really hurts us all in many not always obvious ways. 
> 
> Being assertive is basically part of being a lawyer, so Harry's had to learn how to deal with this, and she does her best to help Molly out here. But it's easier to preach than to practice. Harry also has trouble setting limits on what she's willing to do for Sherlock and John, and when she actually finds an intruder in her apartment the first thing she says is "Can I help you?" Which shows you that Harry still hasn't detoxed from all that internalized bullshit either. 
> 
> I didn't notice this before, but when John's heart talks to him during his internal monologue about sexual fluidity it actually kind of sounds a lot like Sherlock. Except for the "Bitch, please" part.


	3. THE FIRE SERMON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started adding illustrations. There's one at the end of this chapter. It's a spoiler, so don't jump down there till you've read it.

“I’m sorry,” Molly said, spreading the slides out along the lab table. “I’ve isolated a few different locations and arranged them in what I think is chronological order, but…but there are just so many places in and around London that each of these samples could be from, and I can’t—“

“No need to apologize, Molly,” Lestrade said. He’d been counting, and his best guess so far was that Molly issued one apology per two minutes of conversation. Nobody could have that many things to apologize for. Well, nobody whose name wasn’t Greg Lestrade.

“It’s the old story, I’m afraid,” Lestrade said, leaning forward to get a good look at the slides. “Being Sherlock Holmes looks easy enough till you try it yourself. It’s fantastic that you got this far. Tell me about what you’ve smeared on these bits of glass here.”

Molly smiled. The smile seemed real enough. Lestrade had been hugely entertained by watching her in the lab, zipping about from one station to the next, juggling pipettes and solutions and titrations and whatnot with the virtuosity of a concert pianist. She paid absolutely no attention to him, and she never missed a beat or put a foot wrong. It didn’t seem odd to Lestrade any more that she should have taken so quickly to dancing.

“Well…so…how much chemistry do you..sort of…know?” she asked, already wincing in anticipation of her next apology.

“Less than anyone you typically interact with,” Lestrade said.

Molly started to laugh, then turned it guiltily into a cough. “Sorry.”

“Molly,” Lestrade said, putting his elbows on the table and leaning in encouragingly, “do please stop apologizing. I’m well aware that my talents lie elsewhere.”

“I’m sorry—“

“Molly!”

“I know, I know, I’m s—It’s just I hate to make people feel…you know…”

“Stupid?” Lestrade suggested.

“Yes.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first, Molly.”

“Sherlock doesn’t think you’re stupid,” Molly said. “He says that for someone on the official police—“

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Lestrade said. “It can only get worse.”

“I’m sorry—oh—I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to say—“

“It’s all right, Molly. Tell me about the soil. I promise not to resent you for it.”

Molly nodded, and swallowed nervously. “Right. So. Most of what we recovered is unfortunately soil from my garden. Everything else is in very little bits. Just before that, there’s grit from the pavement. There are two other samples of grit that are distinctive enough that I can say they came from different streets; but one bit of cement is much like another and I can’t say for sure there aren’t more different types and I just don’t have the expertise necessary to distinguish—“

“That’s all right, Molly,” Lestrade said. “I too have known the pain of realizing that I will never be as good at my own job as Sherlock Holmes is at telling me how to do it. So apart from these different types of grit…”

“Well, there’s these.”

Molly nudged two slides toward him. He bent over each one attentively, just as if he could see in it anything more than two smears of differently colored slime. She pointed toward the brownish one.

“A lot of funny things here,” Molly said. “I mean funny odd, not funny, you know—“

“I know, Molly,” Lestrade said.

“Nothing funny about this really,” Molly added, looking down at the table. “When you think about how far she ran.”

Anderson, like most of the men in forensics, spoke about the victims only through the medium of black humor. Same with the pathologists. Lestrade had become habituated to it the same we he had become habituated to the smell of death and the sight of dried blood. It was startling to hear the concern in Molly’s voice. She herself seemed ashamed of it, as if she had been taught that it was a weakness. But why a weakness, Lestrade thought, as Molly began discoursing about pH levels. Seems to me you’d have to be stronger, to allow yourself time after time to feel what the occasion really demands.

“But the thing is the pollen,” Molly was saying. “Lots of pollen from at least six different flowering plants. You’d think garden, but then there are these…well, look, the fact is, there are certain microorganisms that exist only in the lower intestines of sheep, and they’re in this sample. And yarrow and shepherd’s purse, they’re both wildflowers; and there’s also Russian spurge, which is really a weed. Now this one here…”

She tapped on the greenish one.

“I got this off the instep—it wasn’t as messed up as the soles so it’s likely this is from early in the journey. This is basically grass, but chewed up and liquefied and there are enzymes present that are very much like ones that you find in saliva but the…well, I’ll just say it’s not human saliva or sheep saliva, it’s from some kind of grass-eating animal that I’m not familiar with.. So, flowers, weeds, grass, and sheep droppings. Where in London do you find all that in the same place?”

“Jesus,” Lestrade groaned. “Where don’t you. Weeds and wildflowers grow on every abandoned property. Grass too. But the sheep and the Ruminant To Be Named Later, that’s a puzzler.”

“I know,” Molly said mournfully. “You’d think farm, really, pasture, but I just don’t see how she could have come from a sheep farm all the way to my back garden on foot.”

“No more do I,” Lestrade said. “So what else have we got?”

“This one is interesting,” Molly said, tapping another slide. “I think it's the oldest but of course it's hard to be sure. It has a whole zoo of microorganisms in it. Many of them are aquatic in origin. It’s not just mud from the bottom of the pond; some of these organisms need salt water to live, but some of them are freshwater so this is, you know, brackish water.”

“Brackish?” Lestrade said.

“Brackish. A mix of salt water and fresh. It’s very sandy but there are also these very fine particles that…all right, well, silt, this is what silt is.”

“Like you’d find in a river,” Lestrade said. “A river like the Thames, say, which gets…brackish?”

Molly gave him an encouraging nod. He rewarded it with a wry little smile.

“Which, as I say, gets brackish as it gets closer to the sea.”

Molly nodded again, more rapidly. “Yes. There’s another slide here, of the same stuff, that has little flecks of tar and motor oil in it, you know, from the boats and from the pilings of the piers. At some point, she walked along the bank of the Thames. So that’s something, maybe.”

“Molly, that’s wonderful.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Because now we know the crime scene, or as close as the trail will get us to it, is somewhere near the river.”

“But ‘somewhere near the river’—I mean, that could be--”

“True. But at least now we’re not dealing with the whole city of London. Well done, Molly.”

She beamed at him. She was so happy to have found something helpful. It was humbling, really, the persistence of such generosity. Molly was young, sure. But she’d seen enough to harden her.

“But…but we still don’t know where she came from,” Molly said.

“Well, Molly,” Lestrade said, rising from his chair and stretching his back, “this is where you let the old dog do his tricks. We’ll do the work that Athelney Jones should have been doing while he was fucking around with…”

All right, stop there, Greg, ladies present.

“We’ll start from your garden and work backwards. My brain will never be studied by scientists, Molly,” Lestrade said, lifting his jacket off the back of the chair, “but I’ve got a strong pair of legs; and at least in my prime, though I say it myself, I was a bit of a silver-tongued devil.”

He grinned at Molly, lifting one eyebrow rakishly. Molly giggled.

“We’ll cover enough ground and coax enough information out of enough people,” Lestrade said happily, “to find your mystery herbivore and your sheep and your riverside crime scene.”

Molly was still sitting down, and looking a bit startled.

“You…you want me to come with you?”

Lestrade finished slipping on his jacket. “Well…I thought—I mean of course if you—“

“Would you like me to?” Molly said, eagerly. “I mean if it would help. I don’t want to be in the way.”

Lestrade put his hands in his pockets and looked her straight in the eye. For once, Molly’s eyes didn’t drop.

“You won’t be in the way, Molly,” Lestrade said. “You are part of the investigation. So far, you _are_ the investigation. My only contribution up to this point has been keeping us out of jail, and even there I have to split the credit with Harry.”

“But…it isn’t exactly…regular, is it? Having me along?”

Lestrade laughed.

“Molly, I’m investigating another detective’s case without his knowledge or permission. In for a penny, in for a pound. It’ll do you good to get out of St. Bart’s for a while.”

He lifted her coat off the back of the chair and held it out for her. He liked performing these small courtesies—a door held open, a chair pulled out. Wendy had always appreciated them. With most women Molly’s age you didn’t dare try. And on the job, forget it. He treated Donovan like he would treat another man, and that seemed to be exactly what Donovan wanted. But Molly seemed to like the old touches. Maybe at heart she was really an old-fashioned girl.

Or maybe, he thought rather sadly, she was simply not used to attention, or to kindness, from men. Or specifically, from Sherlock.

*             *             *

“Oh look,” Harry said, as the door opened. “It’s the Vortex.”

John watched Sherlock brush Harry aside and stride past her through the doorway.

“Spare me the opening banter, Harry,” he said, slipping out of his coat and tossing it over the back of her sofa. “No signs of forced entry at the door, so presumably she entered through the bedroom window, where if memory serves there is a convenient fire escape that young Indiana should have had no difficulty scaling. You _are_ certain it was a woman?”

Sherlock advanced into the bedroom before he’d finished the sentence, eyes darting everywhere as he went. John knew he was memorizing the disarray in the kitchen, the rifled and half-opened drawers in the hall table, and probably a dozen other things out of place that neither he nor Harry would have noticed. Unwinding his scarf and dumping it onto Harry’s bureau, Sherlock went straight to the bedroom windowsill and climbed over it onto the fire escape. John himself stopped in the doorway, eyes drawn to the strange array of objects on the solar system quilt.

“I know a baby butch when I see one,” Harry called after Sherlock as he disappeared through the window. “And I think I know who she is, too.”

Sherlock’s head reappeared in the window, chin resting on the sill. “Who?”

“It’s the oldest daughter from Kingfisher Farms. The one holding the baby boy in the photo.”

“Correct,” said Sherlock’s head. “Her name, by the way, is Ryder.”

“Rider?” Harry said.

“Ryder with a Y,” Sherlock replied. “She’s done remarkably well at living off the grid, but I did find a digital record of a small craft license given to a Ryder Kingfisher, and the photo is a match.”

Sherlock vanished like the Cheshire Cat.

Harry looked at John. John said, somewhat apologetically, “He did work all that out on the way over.”

“And here I thought I had useful information to impart,” Harry said, as her eyes returned to the quilt and the cards scattered over it.

John shrugged his jacket off and laid it across the wicker chair in the corner by the window. “Apparently she found your tarot deck,” John observed.

“It’s not _my_ tarot deck,” Harry snapped. “I never had one. I always used other people’s.”

Sherlock reappeared in the window, lifting one leg to climb in over the sill. “One decent print on the sill from a boot with deep rubber treads. The pattern of the treads corresponds closely to a pair of boots in John’s own closet—“

“Stop right there,” John interjected.

“Don’t be dense, John. This print was not made by _your_ boot, but by a boot just like it issued to someone else who was also in the British Army and also deployed to Afghanistan. Harry, you should remember to close and lock your windows before you leave in the morning. You should also remember that every addict insists at first that she never buys her own. Obviously in regards to magic and the occult, your development coincided at least briefly with that of your fellow-girls.”

Harry crossed her arms over her chest.

“Yes. All right. I did go through a tarot phase. At least it wasn’t unicorns. My point is that not only is this not _my_ tarot deck, it’s not a proper tarot deck at all.”

“Obviously,” said Sherlock. “The images have been hand-drawn and colored on a type of card stock once produced by a factory in Manchester which closed down in 1922. The spread also contains several images which do not appear in the Rider-Waite tarot, which is in fact the deck preferred by nine out of ten thirteen year old girls who think they’re witches. This one here, for instance,” he said, pointing to an image of a skeleton at the bottom of the ocean, staring up at the surface of the water with strange blank bulbous eyes. The legend below the image read THE PHOENICIAN. “It’s anyone’s guess who he is when he’s at home. And one of these cards appears to be blank, which is hardly usual. Take photographs of the layout, John, Harry will presumably want her bed back someday. Soonish, I should think, now that all the denizens of e-Lesbos know she’s available.”

Sherlock stalked past an infuriated Harry and into the bathroom. He stood still on the tile floor for a moment, gazing upon the hat with shining eyes and parted lips.

“At last,” Sherlock breathed, crouching down by the toilet seat on which the hat reposed. In the yellowed light of the overhead fixture it looked shapeless, forlorn, and ugly. Sherlock drew his magnifying glass out of his pocket, almost reverently, and placed it between himself and the hat.  

“Out,” said Sherlock, without looking in their direction. “Both of you take your thoughts elsewhere. The hat and I do not wish to be disturbed.”

John followed Harry out. He went to the bed and began taking pictures of the cards, starting with the cross in the center.

“Well, Hara the Magnificent,” he said, “what do the cards foretell?”

Harry turned on him.

“Do you really want to go down this road?” Harry said, in a vicious whisper. “There are things about _your_ early adolescence that I think Sherlock would find _very_ amusing—“

“All right, Harry.” John raised his hands in surrender.

“You remember what that year was like. I wanted to believe that _someone_ had a fate planned out for us, even if Mum and Dad didn’t. So I read tarot. I don’t see what’s so ridiculous about that. The best and wisest man _you’ve_ ever known is in my bathroom right now trying to read a fucking hat.”

A memory rose up in John’s mind so fast that he couldn’t push it away in time. Harry, just about thirteen, her hair still long, still wearing one of the ruffled blouses Mum insisted on buying for her, sitting cross-legged on her twin bed, shuffling the deck; and John staring at the lone card face up on the bed between them. The King of Swords.

_So you ask a question, John, and then the cards answer._

Maybe Harry really had borrowed the deck from someone else. If so, she was a long time giving it back. They ‘played cards’ regularly in her room, Harry cranking up her stereo so they wouldn’t hear Dad’s shouting or Mum’s timid replies. Each time John asked a question about Dad—it was always about Dad—he would feel butterflies in his stomach. As if it would all really be decided by the fall of the cards.

Harry must have been watching his face, because hers got sadder.

“All the cards are telling me at the moment, John,” she said, “is that this is the strangest burglary in the history of private property.”

Sherlock emerged from the bathroom, hat dangling from one hand and magnifying glass from the other. He tossed both onto the quilt, then threw himself onto Harry’s bed as if it were his own. The cards fluttered, drifting back down in new positions. With one foot tucked into the crook of the other knee, Sherlock put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the pillows. The look he flashed John from this position made the blood rush to his head. So many memories. So many possibilities.

“Rather disappointing,” Sherlock sighed. “I had hoped it would yield a complete solution. Still, I was able to gather a few tidbits.” He settled into the pillows, looking up at the ceiling.  

“Shoes,” Harry said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shoes. Take your shoes off my bedspread.”

Sherlock made a production of kicking off his shoes, one at a time.

“So,” Sherlock said, wiggling his toes impudently at Harry. “As John was asking earlier, what could I hope to learn from this hat about the woman who wears it.”

He took a deep breath.

“Ryder had a privileged childhood; but circumstances changed, and she now thinks of herself, inaccurately, as street-smart. She adores her emotionally distant father but is in conflict with her strong-willed mother, who has expelled her from the family. She is not domestically inclined. She has an impulsive nature which fuels an active erotic life revolving around women with long, dark hair. Last fall she fell in love at first sight with a young, adoring, intense, driven, and deeply romantic woman with whom she maintained a state of domestic bliss for several months; but alas, this woman has ceased to love Ryder. Ryder’s own feelings for this woman remain unresolved, despite the fact that during the past few weeks Ryder has frequently sought comfort in the arms of a different raven-haired beauty. This second woman is an audacious sensualist with Gothic tastes whose self-dramatization masks a sentimental yearning for candlelight dinners and long winter evenings by the fire. I don’t expect the relationship will last, however. There are some serious trust issues there.”

Sherlock looked sweetly up at John. John shook his head.

“The thing is,” John said to Harry, “I know perfectly well that the next few minutes will be excruciating. And yet, some power compels me to ask—“

“Don’t do it, John!” Harry said, waving her hands. “The explosion of arrogant condescension could be powerful enough to tear open the space-time continuum!”

Sherlock waited.

“My goodness, Sherlock,” John said, in his very best bored Willie Wonka. “However did you deduce all that just from looking at that hat.”

Sherlock sat upright, lifting up the hat. John slipped off his shoes and climbed onto the bed. Harry sat on the bed but kept her feet on the floor, as if she wished it to be known that she was not fully committed to this conversation.

“You see this,” Sherlock said, holding the glass over a short dark hair that was sticking into the knitted brim. “Obviously Ryder’s hair. Near the follicle it’s healthy but signs of stress increase as we travel toward the end. It’s black, but under magnification reveals pigments of other colors.”

“So she dyes her hair. So does Harry.”

“There’s no comparison, John. How can you even—look—“ Sherlock picked up one of Harry’s pillows, turned it over, and plucked something nearly invisible from it. “Here’s one of Harry’s hairs—“

“Hey!” Harry shouted.

Sherlock put Harry’s hair next to the one from the hat on the bedspread, placing the magnifying glass over both. “Harry’s stuck with the same color for at least six months and she washes her hair regularly with a conditioner designed for color-treated hair, which is a waste of money as its chemical composition is not significantly different from that of the bargain bin product you use, but still, it smells expensive and that’s what matters.”

“You cannot possibly know what kind of shampoo I’m using just from that hair,” Harry said.

“I can from the bottles in your shower. So. Compare Harry’s hair to this poor frazzled thing on the left. Our visitor has repeatedly damaged her hair with radical color changes, often stripping out the previous color with hydrogen peroxide. Judging by the flakes of inflamed skin clinging to the band of this hat, Ryder does her hair herself and is too impatient to take the necessary precautions to protect her scalp from the chemicals. This,” he said, pointing at Harry’s hair, “is the hair of someone in whom rashness and prudence are ever at war, but in whom at least for the time being prudence has the advantage. That, John,” he said, indicating the hair from the hat, “is the hair of someone whose impulse control is even poorer than your own.”

“You wouldn’t like it if I controlled my impulses.”

“Too much information, John,” Harry said.

Sherlcok gave John a warning glance. “The healthier and somewhat lighter hair nearer the follicle,” he resumed, “indicates that Ryder has allowed her hair to grow undisturbed for approximately four weeks. This is only one of many indications that Ryder has for the past month been shall we say between homes.”

“The other indications being?” John prompted.

“She’s been in the habit of putting her most important possessions in the crown of her hat and using it as a pillow at night,” Sherlock said, pointing to a spot where the stitches had been stretched out. “She thinks this will protect her things, but in fact it makes them easier to steal. The experienced open-air urban dweller secretes her valuables on her person, inside her clothing. So, she’s not as street-smart as she thinks she is. Homelessness also accounts for her odd behavior during the break-in. Once she realized she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she seized the opportunity to enjoy some of the comforts of housing for a change. She used the toilet, had a hot shower, brushed her teeth—“

“Brushed her _teeth_?” Harry demanded. “With my toothbrush?”

“The bristles are still damp.”

“AAGH!”

“—raided the fridge, and then sat down on Harry’s nice comfy bed and did a tarot reading.”

“Because that’s just what you do when you’re squatting in someone else’s place,” John said. “Tarot readings.”

“If you are looking for something very important and your occult-adept mother _named you_ after William Rider and your own faith in Tarot is so great that one of the few possessions you keep with you at all times now that you’re homeless is your great-grandmother’s hand-drawn Tarot deck,” Sherlock said, “then yes, John, if you are in the home where you believe your treasure has been concealed, and you have a few minutes, that is what you do. You ask the cards where the thing is and you hope they can tell you.”

“Couldn’t her mother have named her after…the Ryder Cup, or something…” John began.

“John, she named her second oldest daughter after the djinn and the youngest boy is named after the folk hero of the mummers’ plays. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is intentionality.”

“All right, maybe,” Harry said. “But all of this about her sex life and her lovers--and this pseudo-Freudian claptrap about her father—“

“Please, Harry,” Sherlock said curtly. “Ryder is literally walking in her father’s boots. In fact, apart from this hat, her entire ensemble was nicked from his wardrobe and cut down to fit. Even you, Harry, must confess that this indicates an unusually strong identification with the father. The trousers, by the way, were bespoke, which testifies to the former and alas too brief period of affluence.”

“How do you know the father is emotionally distant?” John said.

Sherlock glanced at him. “He was wounded in Afghanistan. Of course he’s emotionally distant.”

While John wondered what _that_ was supposed to mean, Sherlock returned to the hat.

“There are numerous long, dark hairs in this cap. Some have, over a period of months, become wound into the knitting itself; some can be detached from the hat just by shaking it, which shows they were recently shed. Minor but significant differences in shade and texture indicate the old hairs and the new hairs are from two different heads, neither of them Ryder’s. So, two lovers, both with long dark hair.”

Sherlock lifted the hat, gazing at it almost tenderly.

“But the most curious thing about this hat is the fact of its existence. In its fuzzy, drooping, slouchiness, it is unlike anything else Ryder wears. It was hand-knitted from high-end wool on double-pointed bamboo needles by an amateur. The hat fits well and there are no visible knitting errors, which shows motivation, patience, attention to detail and manual dexterity—far more dexterity than is visible in the clumsy alterations Ryder made to her father’s clothing; nevertheless this type of hat is the kind of simple project commonly taken up by the advanced beginner. It is, in other words, precisely the kind of gift that an adoring, intense, romantic woman might make with her own lily-white hands as a Christmas gift for her new lover. I say new, because this hat is so sartorially inappropriate for Ryder that it must have been begun before they knew each other well. Hence the love at first sight, and the late-fall onset of the affair.”

“But how do you know that this woman doesn’t love her any more?” John interjected.

Sherlock turned the hat inside out. John was struck for the first time by how bright the blue was and the vibrant, not to say eye-popping, contrast it made with the white.

“The band, of course, is discolored by the sweat of the past four weeks, but the inside of the crown is pristine,” said Sherlock. “Since its creation this hat has been regularly washed by hand. We know that Ryder has not the patience for such things, but her lover does. And yet…”

The hat turned itself right side out in Sherlock’s hands. Everything on the outer surface was muted, gray, and visibly gritty.

“This is London pollution,” Sherlock said. “Even assuming our visitor has been frequenting some of the most environmentally questionable quarters of our city, it would require several weeks for such an accumulation of filth. The woman who made this hat would not allow this token of her affection to go so long unwashed—unless that affection had died.”

Sherlock turned the brim back again. “This,” he said, gesturing at the inside, “is young love in all its passion and promise. And this,” he said, pointing to the grimy exterior, “is the end of the affair.”

He placed the hat quite tenderly back on the quilt, trailing his fingertips sadly across the graying rows of blue and white stitches.

“And you think the woman with the long hair dumped Ryder, and not the other way round,” John said.

Even Harry looked at him as if he were a cretin.

“Ryder’s still wearing the hat,” Sherlock said. “Here is a woman for whom hair is the most important part of a carefully constructed self-presentation—who, in fact, interrupted a break-in and search to experiment with a new styling product—and yet Ryder severely compromises her aesthetic by wearing this expertly and lovingly made but curiously unattractive knitted cap just to retain that last tenuous link with the beloved.”

The look on Harry’s face stirred up that filial affection Sherlock had so enjoyed mocking. Clara had no concept of sentimental value. She valued gifts according to how much they cost; and being Clara, she naturally assumed that everyone else was exactly like her under the skin. The engraved mobile phone had been only one of the extravagant presents that Clara had showered on Harry. It was not the only one that had ultimately found a home in 221B, either. John was realizing, only now, that Harry had given Clara’s gifts away partly because she had never wanted or enjoyed them. What Harry would have enjoyed, her face was telling him, was an ugly hat hand-knitted by someone who had wanted every stitch and every row to be perfect, because it would be worn by someone she loved.

“So this other woman,” Harry prompted, grudgingly. “The audacious sensualist with the trust issues.”

Sherlock slipped one hand inside the hat, made a fist, and lifted up toward the overhead light fixture.

“Look at these shiny deposits on the crown,” Sherlock said, as Harry leaned in closer.

“Wax,” Harry said.

Sherlock nodded. “Either Ryder or the new lover is in the habit of removing the hat when she comes into her new lover’s abode, tossing it onto a table or floor or bookcase—a careless gesture that conceals its importance. From the number and the position of the wax drips it appears that most flat surfaces in the new lover’s house are adorned with candelabra.”

Unasked for, Clara’s voice came into John’s head. _More candelabra. What will you ever do with them? I mean in this situation, is it more offensive to keep the gifts, or to send them back?_

With the voice came a brief image of Clara’s golden hair and blue eyes, Clara furrowing her brow as she stared at the pair of silver candelabra in her hands. Clara, taking this question very seriously, continuing to frown in confusion at the boxes full of gifts for a wedding that would never take place. And Harry, having very carefully pushed herself up from her chair, limping down the corridor to find an unoccupied lavatory where she could throw up in peace.

Jesus, John, get it back in the box. Quick.

“So the new lover likes a romantic atmosphere,” Harry was saying. “This makes her an audacious sensualist?”  

Sherlock pressed the hat against his face and inhaled it deeply. Harry moved a little further away from him.

“The phrase ‘romantic atmosphere’,” Sherlock said, sniffing with his eyes closed, “is completely inadequate as a description of what Ryder walks into when she enters her new lover’s boudoir. Quite a few scents here, a whole symphony of floral, fruit, and musk notes. Also smoke from a wood fire…I detect a salty note suggestive of driftwood, which produces blue-lavender flames when burned. Music leaves no material traces, but I can hear it in the air as surely as I can smell each crumbling petal in the bowl of potpourri on which this hat once came to rest. This woman conceives of seduction as a kind of theater of the senses. She commits to pleasure as the way an actress commits to a great role. And _that_ makes her an audacious sensualist.”

Sherlock opened his eyes. Suspended for a moment in his dream, he gave John a blurred, soft, heavy-lidded gaze. The desire that had been simmering on the back burner all morning flared up so fast it was almost painful.

“And the trust issues, can you smell those too?” Harry put in.

Sherlock blinked. His eyes flicked back toward Harry. “Our visitor is spending most of her time on the street,” Sherlock said. “Possibly as a result of being thrown out by her former lover. One would think her new lover might invite her to crash at her place, even temporarily. But either she doesn’t trust Ryder enough to take her in, or Ryder doesn’t trust her enough to stay.”

There was a silence, while everyone looked at the hat.

“That was impressive, Sherlock,” Harry said. “Look at John, he’s ready for a cigarette.”

Sherlock didn’t need to look. John realized that Sherlock had been feeding this slow burn all morning, ratcheting John’s desire up bit by bit, probably taking bets in his own mind about when the impulse would finally become uncontrollable.

“It just doesn’t strike me as terribly practical,” Harry said, “None of it answers the questions that are uppermost in _my_ mind after this incident. Such as, ‘How did she know I had the thing in the first place?’ or ‘How did she know where I live?’ or ‘Is she coming back?’ or ‘If she comes back, is she going to hurt me?’ or even, ‘What the hell is a blue carbuncle?’”

Sherlock fell backwards onto the bed with a sigh.

“I offer them poetry and they clamor for prose,” he complained. “The first two items in your series of lamentably pedestrian questions, Harry, can be answered with the word ‘Facebook.’ You posted a complete photo essay about your purchase of that chicken and you even tagged Kingfisher Farms, didn’t you.”

Harry didn’t answer, except with a stricken look.

“Anyone trying to find out what happened to a white chicken with a double-barred tail by Kingfisher Farms could have found the answer in two minutes—even if she _hadn’t_ happened to overhear her sister Jeanie swooning over your beloved brother at the top of her lungs. You’re a solo practitioner working out of your home; armed with your name, a child could find your home address in under sixty seconds. The answers to the next two questions are probably negative; Ryder had the opportunity to hurt you earlier today and declined it, and as she didn’t find the gem here during what seems like quite a long stay here it’s unlikely she’d expect to find it on a return visit. As for the fifth…” Sherlock closed his eyes. “John, tell her what you found, please, while I take a short nap.”

Harry said, “Not in my bed you won’t.”

“He’s only messing,” John said. “Look, we found…well, here.”

John passed Harry his phone.

“ ‘Blue Carbuncle to be Repatriated,’” Harry read. “ _Times_ of London, February 14.”

“It didn’t come up before because you were searching ‘sapphire’ and not ‘blue carbuncle’,” John said.

“There’s no such thing as a blue carbuncle,” Harry retorted. “Carbuncles are red. That’s what makes them carbuncles.”

“Tell it to the British Museum,” John said. “The blue carbuncle—don’t look at me, Harry, I didn’t name it—was brought back from Greece in 1805 by one of Lord Thomas Elgin’s flunkies. It was never put on display because its historical and cultural value is…well, it says in the—“

Harry looked at the screen. “ ‘According to _De Gemmarum Mirandorum_ ,’ ” Harry read, “the blue carbuncle of Delphi was thought to have been given to mankind by Apollo, who placed within it an eternal flame that endowed it with magical healing properties. Its fame in the ancient world was such that it was believed to be able to cure leprosy, to regenerate lost extremities, to counteract even the most virulent of poisons, and to rejuvenate the very old. Though it has been attributed to Pliny the Elder, the authenticity of _De Gemmarum Mirandorum_ has never been satisfactorily established…forgery controversy of 1846…blah blah blah…” Harry looked up from the screen. “So basically they didn’t want to have to put up a little card on the display case reading, ‘The ancient Greeks may or may not have thought this was a magic rock.’”

“Basically,” John nodded. “But authentic or not, the legend is strong enough that even though a sapphire with these properties would be worth maybe L20,000 on the market, _this_ particular stone could go for well over L500,000 to the right buyer.”

“Over _what_?”

“I know,” John said. “So it was to be sent over to Greece with a load of other artifacts, including other gems, as a kind of consolation prize. You know, ‘Sorry, we’re never giving back the Elgin Marbles, but here, have this instead, it’s sparkly and it might be magic.’ But the shipment went astray. It arrived at Athens as scheduled…but all of the most portable valuables had been removed. Including the blue carbuncle.”

“Christ almighty,” Harry said, letting John’s phone drop onto the quilt and passing a shaky hand over her forehead. “I’ve been walking around all afternoon with that thing in my bag.”

 “You said you were taking it to the police,” John said.

“I took it there,” Harry said. “But…have you _met_ the weekend crew down at New Scotland Yard?”

“No,” John said.

“Well I did. And after that experience, I thought I’d wait until Monday, when I could talk to someone who wouldn’t arrest me just because I happened to find the thing.”

Sherlock’s eyes opened quite suddenly. A moment later, a high-pitched beeping disturbed the air.

“Tell me that’s not your security alarm,” John said.

“She doesn’t have one,” Sherlock put in.

“That’s the oven timer,” Harry said. And, as her eyes widened, “No. No. That woman didn’t…she wouldn’t dare…”

Harry stormed out into the kitchen. John got there just in time to see her throw the oven door open. The smell of roast chicken perfumed the apartment.

“I don’t fucking believe it!” Harry shouted, throwing an oven mitt across the room. “That bitch roasted that chicken in _my oven!_ Is there _anything_ in this place she didn’t violate?”

While Harry ran off to inspect the living room, John found her bag on the hall table and went to have a peek inside.

“Don’t touch that bag!” Harry shouted. “That’s _my_ bag! Leave me the _one_ thing of mine that hasn’t been pawed over by other people!”

John straightened up guiltily. He opened his mouth to argue, but was stopped short by a sound from Sherlock’s direction. It was a sound he had heard frequently the previous night, in a completely different and rather knee-weakening context.

Whipping around, he saw Sherlock standing at the counter with a chicken drumstick in one hand. He took another bite and chewed it. He made the sound again, even louder.

“Harry,” Sherlock called, after gulping it down. “You were absolutely right. This chicken is _fantastic._ ”

“Sherlock!”

John and Harry yelled it together, in almost exactly the same tone of voice.

“Delicious,” Sherlock said, tearing off another mouthful.

“That thing tested positive for _scopolamine_!” John shouted.

Sherlock kept eating. “Now it’s been cooked it’s perfectly safe,” he said. “The heat will have broken the more dangerous alkaloids down. I must say the meat is _unusually_ tender. Worth every penny you paid for it. I wonder if after all small amounts of alkaloid might have penetrated the muscles, just enough to—“

John leapt to the counter, reached across, and snatched the drumstick out of Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock grabbed John’s wrist. While they armwrestled on the counter, Harry found the oven mitt, grabbed the chicken by the cavity, and tipped the whole thing into the rubbish bin.

“You’re being hysterical, John,” Sherlock grunted. John had always known Sherlock was strong, but it was disconcerting to feel himself slowly losing this contest. “Nightshade is far less deadly than most people believe. All the poisons in nightshade are used in modern medicines, in small doses…Aha!”

With a final push, Sherlock pinned John’s arm to the counter, then extracted the drumstick with his other hand. He grabbed it too hard; the thing shot across the counter into the living room. Harry nabbed it and sent it to join the rest of the body in the bin.

Sherlock let go of John’s arm. John grabbed Sherlock by his shirtfront and pulled him forward, slamming his body into the counter.

They stared at each other, noses almost touching. 

“You promised,” John snarled. “After the Cornish horror. _No more testing poisons on yourself._ ”

“I promised not to test poisons on _us_ ,” Sherlock said. “I didn’t say anything about _me_. You are doctor, after all, and—“

“Yes, Sherlock,” John said, giving him a shake. “I am a doctor, but I cannot _raise the dead,_ with or without Apollo’s magic rock.What _is_ it with you and poison?”

“I wasn’t testing the poison. I know perfectly well that chicken is not lethal. Ryder certainly knows these chickens better than we do, and she cooked it, didn’t she?”

“So, what? You just wanted to know what chicken à la nightshade tastes like?”

“YES!”

John let go of him. He could hear himself breathing hard, and Sherlock was not calm either.

“Sherlock,” he said, “you have got to stop treating yourself like a laboratory specimen.”

“When you stop treating me like a child.”

“Like a child. Because I don’t want you to kill yourself.”

“Because you have become allergic to risk where I am concerned.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Risk is as necessary to me as oxygen, John. I will not live without it, even—Harry, what’s the matter?”

This was to Harry. She was marching straight to the front door, her bag over one shoulder and a fistful of keys in one hand.

“Harry?” John said. “Where are you going?”

“Out!” Harry snapped, without looking at them. “I am going out.”

“Why?”

“That is none of your business.”

Harry pulled the door open. “Don’t mind me, boys. Make yourselves at home. Everybody else has.”

The door slammed. John and Sherlock both stared at it, silently.

“You know where she’s going, don’t you,” John said.

Sherlock let out a sigh that seemed to release some of the tension in the room.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“She’s absolutely right, John, it’s not our concern.”

“It is _my_ concern that we’ve driven her out of a place of safety…well, relative safety…”

“No, no, John. She was always intending to go. She looked at the clock before she went to her room to change her clothes. She has an appointment.”

“Appointment? On a Saturday afternoon? With who?”

“Is it really possible that you have not deduced this for yourself?”

“Yes.”

“She has a date, John.”

John blinked at him.

“She has a date with a woman she met two weeks ago on e-Lesbos,” Sherlock said. “Vivien—that’s her name—is a librarian, specializing in British literature pre-1850. She’s quite neurotic, fancies herself a poet, and all in all seems a bit of a basket case, but she does strike me as the last person in the world who would kill her new lover in order to frame her ex for her own murder, so to Harry I suppose she will be a refreshing change.”

“You know this how?”

“I went through her phone this morning,” Sherlock said. “While you were in there apologizing. She and Vivien have been carrying on quite a lively correspondence. They hadn’t yet made their plans for tonight; but it’s not hard to work out what they are. You saw what she was wearing.”

“No,” John said, slowly. “If you’ll recall, I was busy arguing with you.”

“Which is no excuse for failing to observe,” Sherlock said haughtily. “Dark slacks and a multihued knitted vest over a plum silk button-down shirt. Casual enough for a café; take the vest off and it’s formal enough for any restaurant Harry would patronize. They’ll meet first for coffee, see how it goes, and then perhaps go on to dinner.”

“And you really think that’s a good idea?” John said. “Letting Harry go out and meet a total stranger, on a day like this one is shaping up to be, with a jewel worth half a million in her purse?”

“Harry’s three years older than you are,” Sherlock said.  “Do please relinquish the illusion that you ‘let’ her do anything. Besides, the stone is not in her purse. She took the purse into the bedroom with her when she went to change. She’ll have secreted in there, in some hiding place known only to her.”

John shook his head.

“You observed all that.”

“Yes.”

John took a deep breath.

“In the future, Sherlock,” he said, “when we’re having a row, I expect to have your _complete attention._ ”

There was only a tiny hesitation before they both burst out laughing.

“My complete attention is a fearsome thing,” Sherlock said. “No one could possibly cope with it.”

“I can, and what’s more, I believe that I have.”

One of Sherlock’s hands raked through his hair, slipping down to cup the back of his neck.

“I do recognize,” Sherlock finally said, unwillingly, “that if you didn’t take better care of me than I take of myself, I wouldn’t still be alive.”

“I don’t want you to live without risk,” John conceded. “I don’t think there’s any danger that you ever will. I just…” He sighed. “I can’t help it. I worry about you, I worry about Harry…”

Sherlock took a step closer.

“Poor John,” he said, tracing the side of John’s face with his right hand. “Everybody’s good soldier.”

With unusual tenderness, Sherlock drew John into a kiss. The embers of that longing began glowing brighter.

 “So our first row is over,” said Sherlock murmured, with his lips pressed to John’s ear. “From my research it appears that _this thing_ is developing more and more of the taxonomic features of the _relationship._ As I understand it, in the classic ‘relationship,’ a row is typically succeeded by make-up--”

“Not here, Sherlock,” John said, with his arms still around Sherlock’s neck. 

Sherlock buried his hands in John’s hair. “She won’t know.”

John dropped his hands and drew back. “No. Really, Sherlock, no.”

John was already addressing the back of Sherlock’s head. He was loping toward the bedroom, naked heels flashing.

“We can’t!” John said, following him.

“She told us to make ourselves at home,” Sherlock replied, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t hear the snark.”

Sherlock pulled his shirttails out of the waistband of his trousers. “We should collect the cards, we don’t want to lose any.”

The shirt fluttered onto the bed. One of the cards lifted into the air, catching the light before floating to the floor. It showed a beautiful dark-haired woman sitting in some kind of thronelike chair perched on a rocky hill overgrown with what looked like blueberries. The legend beneath read BELLADONNA.

“I can’t,” John said, folding his arms tightly across his chest. “I cannot have sex with you on Harry’s bed.”

“Of course not,” Sherlock said. “We would leave too much material evidence. We’ll use the shower.”

“ _No_ , Sherlock!”

Now Sherlock’s pants were on the floor. From inside the bathroom, John heard water pattering on tile.

“I’m going in,” said Sherlock, popping his head back into the bedroom. “Come if convenient.”

John heard the shower door sliding back.

“If not convenient…” Sherlock called back, and then the door slid shut and cut off the rest.

John lay down fully clothed on the bed. He tried not to listen to the sound of falling water striking Sherlock’s skin. He thought of deserts, of the barren rocks and the ring of cracked mud surrounding Kandahar, of corpses and shattered limbs and amputations and bodies on slabs and car crashes and candelabra and absolutely anything that he thought might be capable of putting out the fire that was devouring him.

Cursing, John jumped off the bed and stomped into the bathroom.

Sherlock slid the shower door back. His skin was glistening, though pallid as ever. A thousand tiny rivers flowed from his head and shoulders over his chest in an ever-shifting lattice of streams and tributaries, each adding its own rippling tongue to this wordless persuasion. A voice was still shouting at John from the back of his mind— _you are mad, you have lost it, what are you now, just a bubbling cauldron of lust_ \--but John decided he could no longer hear that voice over the rushing of the water.

John began undressing, furiously. Sherlock laughed at him.

“You are a very wicked man,” John finally said, stepping over the edge of the tub, “and I am going to hell for doing this.”

Sherlock slid the shower door shut.

*             *             *

Just as the stink of rotting food became nearly unbearable, Molly’s hand closed on something that felt like it might be satin. Scrunching up her nose, closing her eyes, she plunged the other hand into the bin, feeling around near the satin for any other kind of fabric.

Her hand found something furry. Maybe it was another piece of clothing.

The furry thing moved.

Molly snapped upright with a scream, the satin still clutched in one hand. She threw the thing down at the ground. Her hands trembled in the air while her whole body shuddered.

Lestrade came running. “Molly? What are you doing? What’s happened?”

“A rat!” Molly shouted. “In the bin…a rat…a rat…”

Lestrade was quite close now, and when he put a hand on each of her shoulders, some of the shaking subsided.

“Did it bite you?”

Molly was already examining the hand that had touched the moving furry thing. “No…no, I didn’t feel anything, and there’s no break in the skin.”

“All right, we’ll go back to the Spar and wash your hands. What were you doing in the bin anyway?”

“Looking for the victim’s clothes.”

Lestrade’s mouth fell open, just a little.

“You…you really didn’t have to do that, Molly.”

“But I found her top! It has to be her top. Look at it.”

Lestrade looked at the sad heap that lay on the ground between them. It had once been a black short-sleeved satin blouse, with a line of black sequins around the low-dipping scoop neck and bands of matte fabric—crape, maybe—going around the ribs, under the breasts. It was the kind of thing Molly would look at with some envy on a mannequin in a shop window, but could never bring herself to try on. The man at the Spar had said she was wearing a stretchy black miniskirt with it. That might also be in the bin, but after the rat Molly was not willing to make another dive for it.

It was wonderful, the way Greg had worked the man at the Spar. It started out as just an ordinary conversation, and gradually got on to the subject of late-night customers, and before Molly knew what was happening the man at the Spar was talking about how at around two in the morning, he’d seen the Hyacinth Girl—or someone matching her description—crouching on the pavement just outside the entrance to his store, vomiting. Molly had watched Lestrade commiserate with him. These university students, he’d said, I don’t know what it is but they drink like fish…and all of a sudden Molly could see the man’s memory of her coming back to life in Technicolor detail. “And it wasn’t just _any_ vomit,” he’d said, bitterly. “It was…like…alien vomit. I swear to God, there were blue streaks in it.”

Blue from the nightshade.

The man at the Spar had rushed out to chase her off. She’d said something that sounded like gibberish and moved off toward the alley, wailing. He saw her pulling at her blouse and whimpering; but then a customer went in and he returned to the counter.

And since he thought she was a student out for a night of binge-drinking and public puking, he hadn’t gone after her. He hadn’t known what was happening to her, any more than she had known where she was or what she was doing.

Molly hadn’t gone out much when she was at university. At least now she no longer regretted that.

Lestrade took a pair of blue evidence gloves out of his pocket and lifted the blouse off the pavement, examining it while holding it and its many odors as far away from his nose as possible.

“You’re a brave woman, Molly Hooper,” he said. “Poor thing. Look at the stains, all down the front. Some of that’s blood, isn’t it?”

Molly nodded. “She was starved. There would have been so little to bring up. In fact…”

This new thought made her stomach twist.

“Molly?” Lestrade said, gently.

“The fact that there’s vomit at all,” she said, “or diarrhoea, means they must have fed her a meal before she died. Otherwise there’d have been nothing in her system. And if you put…if someone’s starving, and food’s in front of her, she’ll eat it…even if she _knows_ it’s poisoned. If you’re starving, you can’t help it.”

“God almighty,” said Lestrade, quietly. “These people we are dealing with, Molly, are something special. Not your ordinary garden variety murderers. There’s quite a sadistic streak evident just in what we’ve already seen so far.” And, as his eyes darkened, “Maybe I was wrong to bring you. This could get very dangerous.”

Molly clenched her hands by her sides, and said, “I don’t mind. She died in my garden. I want to help her. Like you were talking about.”

His face was very close to hers now. Looking at his mouth, she could almost feel that first kiss. It wasn’t unwelcome then. It wouldn’t be unwelcome now.

“All right, Molly,” he said. “If that’s how you feel.”

Lestrade stepped back, rolling up the evidence bag and stuffing it into his satchel.

“We’re getting there!” he said. “We’re getting there, Molly. I wish I could get you onto the crime scene team instead of that prat Anderson. Take away his Luminol and his UV light and the rest of his toys and what is he? A backstabbing prick with a terrible hairdo. Next time he gets on my wick, Molly, I’m going to send him into rat-infested a bin after a piece of evidence, and I won’t catch him when he faints.”

Lestrade clapped Molly on the shoulder in a kind of comradely way.

“Well done you, Molly. You found us our first piece of material evidence. Now let’s get out of this alley. The rat you met must have friends.”

Stuffing the skirt into a plastic bag and sealing it, Lestrade removed his gloves and tossed them into the bin. They went back toward the Spar. Lestrade seemed quite jolly now. Molly was silent. She was pleased that they seemed to be friends now. But she couldn’t figure out how to make today and last night and this morning fit together. She did remember everything that had happened. But she was as far away as ever from knowing what it meant.

*             *             *

This late on a Saturday afternoon, the Café Beckett was nearly empty. A bored server lounged in the doorway between the indoor restaurant and the outside seating. He was eyeing, with some resentment, a lone woman who sat at one of the round metal tables on the terrace. She had ordered a single cup of coffee, which had barely been tasted. She sat with one elbow on the table, her head propped on one hand. She wore a floral silk scarf, knotted under the chin, over her dark curly hair, which had been pinned up behind into a bun. Her other hand held open a paperback, which she was reading through a pair of spectacles with enormous round tortoiseshell frames.

Harry watched her for a moment, wondering if she was really about to do this. Online, when they were just PrinceHalV and BellaDonna253, the flirting had been a lot of fun. Unlike Clara, Vivien had read everything, and she could carry on an argument without getting nasty. The fact that Viven cited Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ as one of her favorite novels of all time gave Harry pause at first; but upon mature consideration she decided she would be a better fit for someone who had some sympathy for the Creature than with one of the many, many Jane Austenites she had chatted with on e-Lesbos, who were basically all looking for Ms. Darcy.

But here it was. The crossroads. A lot of different paths might lead away from this moment, only one of them being the beginning of he first relationship since Clara. It had been more than nine years since she went on a first date; and she’d never been on a date sober. But it was either take the plunge, or turn around and go home and spend the rest of her life being a junior associate in the firm of Holmes & Watson.

Rashness and prudence ever at war. It would be a lot easier to stay pissed off at Sherlock if he weren’t right so much of the time.

Harry steeled herself, and stepped forward.

Vivien remained absorbed in her book. Harry glanced down at its pages. She was about two-thirds of the way through; the spine was cracked and there was an apparently recent coffee-stain splashed across the top of one page. It was the Oxford Classics edition of _The Moonstone._

Cursed priceless maybe-magical jewels, Harry thought. So much fun in fiction; so much agony in real life.

“Vivien?” Harry said.

Vivien looked up. Her lips—painted a rather alarming shade of red—parted in a charming smile that revealed unusually white teeth. Through the lenses her large eyes and their dark lashes seemed magnified; even without them, Harry reflected, those eyes would be unusually though not unattractively prominent. Vivien’s face, Harry thought as she rose from her chair, was one that Edgar Allan Poe would have fallen in love with. Vivien’s clavicles looked sharp, and her neck almost fragile. But Vivien’s black-and-white scoop-neck shift dress—very mod, very nicely setting off a pair of well-toned arms—hinted almost shyly at an intriguing figure beneath.

“Harry!” she said, extending a hand. “I must say, your profile photo doesn’t do you justice.”

Harry took her hand, hoping she wasn’t blushing. Vivien’s carefully tended nails matched her red lips; but her grip was reassuringly strong. “Likewise, I’m sure,” Harry said. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Well,” Vivien smiled, as she resumed her seat, “that depends on how you count. I’ve been wanting to get together ever since I started in on _The Moonstone._ Thank you so much for recommending it. I would hate to think I could have gone to my grave without ever discovering Miss Clack.”

Harry took her seat. “Isn’t she fabulous?”

Vivien nodded. “But…you know…I get so nervous about these face-to-face things,” she said, putting one hand up to her temple. “I’m so much better at writing than talking. But this afternoon, I just said to myself, listen Vivien, it’s do or die. Woman does not live by books alone. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to meet on such short notice…but here you are!”

Vivien had a warm alto voice with just a touch of smoke in it. Harry thought she would enjoy listening to it, whatever else came out of this.

“Here I am,” Harry said, with an encouraging smile. “And so far, nothing terrible has happened!”

Vivien laughed. Her smile seemed different now—happier, less calculated.

Harry beckoned to the server in the doorway, who approached with a deliberate lack of urgency. Service at the Café Beckett would live up to its name, apparently. She almost expected to see GODOT on his nametag. But maybe, she thought, watching Vivien smile down at her menu, that would turn out not to be an entirely bad thing.

*             *             *

When the trail gets cold, Sherlock had once told Lestrade, the best thing you can do is stop following it. Take your mind off it completely. Have a smoke. Play the violin. Or, in your case Lestrade, maybe just eat something. When you think you’ve forgotten all about it, something will occur. Over the years he had found it to be good advice. This was how Lestrade found himself sitting on a bench in the Hermitage Riverside Memorial Garden, looking glumly out toward the Tower and London Bridge and tearing into a gyro sandwich. Molly sat next to him, nibbling cautiously but gamely on spanakopita, her feet swinging back and forth.

They had tracked the Hyacinth Girl from Molly’s place on Adler Street south to Commercial Road; with the help of Molly’s grit samples they had managed to pick up the trail again at Back Church Lane, where by good fortune a bloke who had been working late at a warehouse had noticed a woman in a black top and miniskirt coming out of the underpass. That got them to Cable Street; a short nightmare later, an insomniac yuppie at in an enormous office building recalled having looked down out of his high-rise window and seen what he’d thought was an “espresso-induced hallucination” heading north toward Cable Street on Ensign Street. Talking to anyone they could find and diving into whatever likely rubbish they came upon, they had turned up a journalist at the Sun’s offices on Vaughan Road who had taken a moment from her race to the deadline to wonder where, at this time of night, that crazy woman was headed. Reasoning that the Hyacinth Girl had been doing her best most of the time to head northeast, Lestrade had played a hunch and taken them southwest to Wapping High Street, where an hour of canvassing had turned up nothing. Hence a diversion to a Greek take-away and, ultimately, to this unprepossessing swath of grass and dirt with a river view.   

“You’ve _never_ eaten Greek food before?” Lestrade said, with his mouth full.

Molly glanced at him with a shy smile. “No, never.”

“How have you managed to avoid it?”

Molly shrugged. “On Sundays, growing up, my mother made a pork roast and we ate that, with potatoes and tinned vegetables, until Tuesday. Wednesday was Dover sole poached in butter, with potatoes and tinned vegetables. Thursday, roast chicken with potatoes and tinned vegetables. That lasted through Saturday and then it was back to pork on Sunday. I took cheese and onion sandwiches to school for lunch every day. I just got used to always eating the same things. I thought once I was on my own I’d make all these lovely dinners, a different one every day, learn how to make my own curry, try all kinds of exotic dishes.”

Lestrade nodded. “Why didn’t you?”

“I tried making lamb vindaloo once,” Molly said. “It came out all wrong and I burned my hand on the pan. I remember standing over the sink, running water on it, and just crying and crying.”

Molly turned her eyes back to the triangle of pastry in her hand.

“Sorry,” she said. “Shouldn’t go on about things like that. You’ll think I’m mental.”

 “I’ve no wish to judge, Molly,” Lestrade said, ruefully. “Anyone who’s put up with Sherlock Holmes as long as you and I have _has_ to be mental.”

Molly laughed. “We do, don’t we.”

“I’m mad, you’re mad, John’s mad, Mrs. Hudson is mad, Harry’s getting madder by the day…”

“We’re all mad here,” Molly finished, with a smile.

Lestrade chewed in silence for a bit.

“The exams, the grades, organic chemistry,” Lestrade said. “Did all that come easy to you?”

Molly examined her spanakopita and hesitated.

“Yes,” she blurted. “It’s a terrible thing to say. But yes.”

“Why terrible?”

“Because people hate you for it. They pretend to be your friends to get your notes and after the exam they pay you back by organizing some kind of…humiliating...”

Molly attacked the spanakopita, desperately not wanting to finish the sentence.

“Ah yeah,” Lestrade said, taking another bite. “Jealousy. Happens in the force too. Look at Jones. He’d skin, salt, and eat me if he could, just because my solve rate’s higher. The slagging I get over Sherlock, you wouldn’t believe it. Oh look, there’s Lestrade and he’s brought his dick with him.  And they would all bring him on board in a _minute_ if they could.”

Lestrade contemplated, gloomily, the vast and diverse archive of insults that had been bestowed upon him by his colleagues. He’d selected the only one he thought Molly could handle. Most of the others were far more indelicate and relied on more crassly explicit allusions to castration, sodomy, cocksucking, and impotence. His rational mind told him that he was a better man than they were for being secure enough to put the case ahead of his own ego. What was the matter with them all, his rational mind would think, that asking for another man’s help made you his eunuch. All the same, his reptile brain couldn’t help twitching whenever one of these crude barbs pricked him.

“I’m just saying, Molly,” he said. “Maybe you will make your own curry one day, if you keep at it. You shouldn’t give up on something just because it doesn’t work out the first time.”

 Molly turned her head toward him. “Maybe you’re right,” she said.

He understood at that moment what it was about Molly that hooked him. It was the pluck. Everyone else looked at her and saw the timidity and the awkwardness and the, be honest, straight-up panic with which Molly approached interactions with people who were not dead. But last night at the party, and out at Swing Shift, he’d seen her striking out bravely on her own, doing her best to ignore the anxiety and the warnings and the fear of failure. He’d seen it before, too, at that terrible Christmas party of John’s. She’d really put herself out there and gone for it. The results were hideous. But she did it, and she survived it. And…she was still hung up on Sherlock.  

He looked out over the river. The sun had sunk behind the Tower. He couldn’t look at it now without a shiver, thinking of Moriarty. That was a shame. He used to love this view, especially at this hour, with the bridge lit up against the violet stain of twilight spreading through the sky. If he held this job for long enough, he thought, there wouldn’t be any part of this city that didn’t remind him of a murder.

“I was never much good at school,” Lestrade said. “I thought it wouldn’t matter, see, because I was going to be in a rock band. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll was the life for me. Well, the drugs part did come true, once I started out in Narcotics.”

Molly laughed softly.

“What about the…sex?”

He glanced at her just to make sure he’d heard right. No, she’d really said it. She had that Venturing Into Danger look in her eye. Well, pluck ought to be rewarded, by honesty if by nothing else.

“Oh, yeah, sure, me and the girls back in the day, guilty as charged,” Lestrade said, washing the last of his gyros down with the last of his Vittel. “Every daughter’s father’s least favorite boy, that was me. I had just tremendous attitude, you know, and everything I deigned to wear, I thought it was just _the end_.”

He was relieved to hear Molly laughing along with his own self-deprecation.

“If only they knew,” he sighed, shaking his head. “I talked a great game. But really…well, none of us at that age know what we’re doing.”

“What is there to know?” Molly said.

“Oh Jesus, everything,” Lestrade chuckled. “I mean you’re the boy, right, you’re supposed to know how it works. You know what’s meant to go where, of course, but as for actually…with a real girl…well, it’s like Elvis says. You can see those pictures in any magazine; but what’s the use of looking when you don’t know what they mean?”

“Elvis?” Molly said, and from the puzzled look on her face he knew she was imagining sequined jumpsuits and crazy sideburns.

“Not Elvis Presley. Elvis Costello. ‘Mystery Dance.’ Brilliant song. Ever heard it?”

Molly shook her head.

“Here, I’ve got it on my phone.”

He took it out. The little battery warning flashed at him, and then, tauntingly, it began shutting down.

“Come on, you little--!” Lestrade shouted at it. “Don’t do this to me! I’m trying to impress a lady here!”

The laugh that burst out of Molly was so spontaneous, so genuinely happy.

“You could just show me how it goes,” she said, smiling.

Lestrade hopped off the bench, turning in midair to face her, with the river behind him. He let his hands find their old positions on the imaginary guitar.

“Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill—

  
He jumped out the window cause he couldn’t sit still.  
Juliet was waiting with a safety net,  
Saying ‘Don’t bury me cause I’m not dead yet.'  
I want to know about the mystery dance…”

With the air guitar in his hands, all the moves came back to him. He could still do them, though the half-split hurt a lot more than it used to. He could hear, and even see, Molly laughing. Real belly laughs, as abandoned and ridiculous as his own creaky gyrations. The harder she laughed, the more outrageous his moves  became.

“…why don’t you show me cause I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’m still mystified—I can’t do it any more and I’m not satisfied…”

Molly was bouncing along on the bench, kicking her feet to the rhythm. Singing, as best he could remember it, the instrumental break, Lestrade hopped over and beckoned her off the bench. She shook her head a couple times, but finally sprang up and let him take her by the hand. They fell into the rhythm easily. The breeze off the river did some crazy things to Molly’s hair, and she was still laughing. Lestrade went on singing as best he could.

 _I remember when the lights went out_  
_And I was trying to make it look like it was never in doubt._  
_She thought that I knew and I thought that she knew—_  
_So both of us were willing but we didn’t know how to do it…_

It all seemed to be coming back to Molly pretty well, so Lestrade thought he would risk ending with a dip. She knew what was coming; but someone somehow put the weight on the wrong foot, and instead of ending up perched on Lestrade’s knee, Molly knocked him onto the grass.

Lestrade lay on his back, staring up at the purpling sky. He felt curiously lighthearted. The teenaged Greg had been released from wherever the past thirty years had locked him, and though the song was over now all that youth and energy was still tingling.

“Greg? I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

Molly’s hair hung down on either side of her head, brushing his face gently as she leaned over him. He looked up at her dark eyes, and a voice in his head said, _this is where it all went wrong._

Another voice said, _take your own advice, you bollocks._ Who knew, maybe that was Sherlock’s. On second thought, it sounded more like John’s.

“I’m fine, Molly,” he said. “The old back’s going to be a bit stiff tomorrow. But it was worth it.”

Molly’s head disappeared. She flopped onto her back next to him.

He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were shining, and her mouth had lost that nervous tension.

“I love the smell of grass,” Molly said. “It reminds me of being a kid.”

“Me too,” Lestrade said.

“Long summer evenings out at the park,” Molly said. “I loved that. It was the one thing I got to do outdoors. Rolling down the hills in the grass…and sometimes we’d get to the zoo, or…”

Will you stop talking, Molly, Lestrade thought. I’m ready to make a move here.

Molly’s eyes snapped open. Her hands rose to her mouth. She cried, “Oh! Llamas! LLAMAS!”

Good Lord, he’d actually driven her mad.

She wriggled onto her side to face him. He turned too.

“That green sample I was showing you, with the semiliquescent grass,” she gabbled. “The enzyme. Llamas, they eat grass, and sometimes when they get mad they spit, it’s this green slimy kind of…it’s exactly like what was on that slide…and sheep too, and all those wildflowers…and the river…we used to go there, sometimes, for a holiday—“

Lestrade felt the spark catch. 

“Mudchute Park,” he said. “The Isle of Dogs.”

There was a petting zoo there, with sheep, and cows, and goats, and spitting llamas, and Russian spurge and all the rest of it. And it was just across the road from the river.

Molly sat up. So did he.

“I mean—it’s so much farther east—I don’t know how she would have—“ Molly said.

“Boat,” Lestrade exclaimed. “She begged borrowed or found a boat. That’s how she got away. She didn’t trust herself in the estuary so she went westward and when she was sure she’d shaken them she went ashore. Maybe right here, but at any rate somewhere in the area. And then she went north toward…well, we don’t know what. But we know what we’re looking for.”

Molly was staring at him, eager to hear the answer, hanging on every word. She was, at that moment, beautiful. Crazy hair and all.

Lestrade took a deep breath.

“We’re looking for a place on the Isle of Dogs, near Mudchute Park,” he said, “where you could keep a woman prisoner for several weeks without attracting anyone’s notice. Not a rental property. They’d need exclusive access and the ability to modify doors and windows. Most likely a house, most likely with either an attic or a below-ground-level space where the windows could be nailed shut or boarded up without attracting undue attention. It’s been lived in for at least…four, would you say?”

Molly nodded. “Yes. The starvation, even assuming she started out thin, I think four weeks would be about right.”

“Four weeks but may well have been abandoned since last night. This is doable, Molly, it is definitely possible. We can find this place. And when we have, it will give us the people.”

They scrambled to their feet, trotting back toward the street. Moment postponed. So what. It would all come in time. They were on fire now. They’d leave their own trail of invisible sparks, all along the riverbank.

*             *             *

Darkness was falling outside Harry’s apartment. Sherlock hadn’t wanted to turn on any of the lights. He and John had dressed themselves, in case of Harry’s sudden return, and now lay together on Harry’s bed, with John’s head pillowed on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Don’t blame yourself, John,” Sherlock murmured, stroking his hair. “You had no choice. I’m irresistible.”

“You miserable fucker,” John said, draping one arm across Sherlock’s chest.

They lay peacefully for a moment.

“We’re all transparent to you, aren’t we,” John said. “All us ordinary mortals. You can see through us like glass. You know exactly what’s inside us.”

There was a silence.

“No, John. That’s not what it’s like,” Sherlock said.

He kept slowly stroking John’s hair, as slowly the words floated out into the dusk.

“Everything I see is on the surface,” he said. “I can tell where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing and based on that I can make a number of inferences which are surprising to people only because they consider themselves unique individuals and fail to understand how many of their feelings and thoughts and actions are conditioned by circumstances beyond their control. For some people, that’s all there is, the surface. And for some, what’s inside is so simple and consistent that it can be predicted fairly comfortably. Lestrade, for instance. Deep but not complex. Ditto for Harry. You, on the other hand…”

Sherlock’s fingers in his hair were still tender, still comforting. But John felt a chill go through him all the same.

“You remember that case we had down at the stables,” he said. “With that kidnapped racehorse." 

“Of course I remember,” John said. “There are people wearing T-shirts now that say ‘The dog did nothing during the night time’ on the front and ‘That was the curious incident’ on the back. And I do not make a penny off them, either. It’s not fair.”

 “The dog that didn't bark,” Sherlock said. “It wasn’t too long after I met you that I started to hear the dogs not barking. You’d never have told me about Harry if your phone hadn’t done it for you. You never speak of either your mother or your father. You mentioned Mary’s name just once, only today, by accident, and that seemed to cause you immense pain and fear. You’re silent about the people you love. You’re silent about the people you’ve lost. Pattern recognition comes as easy as breathing to me. I can’t help noticing that all the people you love are also the people you’ve lost—permanently, or just temporarily. Myself included.”

John kept his breathing even. His body had tensed up as soon as Sherlock began talking; but under the almost hypnotic rhythm of his words it was slowly beginning to relax.

“When you talk to me and I don’t remember a word you’ve said,” Sherlock said, softly. “Or when you leave the room and come back and hour later and I haven’t noticed you’ve gone. You think I’m just not paying attention to you because I’m off in my head solving a mystery or balancing a chemical equation or composing a sonata in my head. Sometimes you’re right about that. But sometimes, John, I simply can’t hear you over the deafening sound of all the dogs that don’t bark.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. At least nothing John could think of.

“What time is it?” Sherlock asked, suddenly.

John glanced at the digital alarm clock by the bed. “Six o’clock. Why?”

Sherlock turned his face toward the window and the fire escape, murmuring something impatient, disappointed, and inaudible.

“What’s the matter, Sherlock?”

He remained silent. John realized that just from looking at the outline of Sherlock’s back, he knew that Sherlock was hiding some secret anxiety.

“You were expecting something to happen before now,” John said, slowly. “Another break-in, maybe. That’s really why you kept us here, isn’t it. Thinking that once Harry went out, Ryder or…or someone else…might come looking for that thing.”

Sherlock sighed.

“But she hasn’t,” John said, now beginning to share the anxiety. “Nobody has. So what does that mean?”

“It means,” Sherlock snapped, sitting up abruptly, “that I may perhaps have made a rather serious miscalculation.”

*             *             *

“I’ve experimented with a bit of everything,” said Vivien. “From a spiritual point of view, I mean.”

Harry had finished her croissant twenty minutes ago. Vivien’s plate held no more than a few sad wisps of the basil leaves in her Caprese salad. At some point, no doubt, it would occur to the server to bring them the bill; but nobody was in much of a hurry.

“I could never get my head into the neo-pagan thing,” Harry said. “I’m not a good fit for any  
belief system that can’t incorporate irony. Though I was attracted to Buddhism for a time.”

“Really.” Vivien had a way of bringing her shoulders together and leaning over the table that never failed, Harry had noticed, to offer a discreet glimpse of cleavage. It typically coincided with moments at which Vivien was expressing keen interest in something Harry was saying. Harry tried not to hold this against her. It had been a trick of Clara’s, when she was trying to get something out of Harry; but Clara was dead, and Harry would have to learn to stop seeing her everywhere.

“The idea of detachment, you know,” Harry said. “That if we could only stop caring about all the useless _stuff_ we kill each other over, we could end human suffering.” She looked down into her empty teacup. “It makes so much sense. I thought that if I could learn detachment, I could cut off my own suffering at the source.”

“But you didn’t,” said Vivien, picking up her water glass so that the ice cubes tinkled in it, almost musically.

“No. I ran into the problem I always run into. I can detach from _things_ , but not from people, or from my own flesh. Can’t do it. As much trouble as this body has caused me, I don’t want a divorce from it. I think the ascetics have it wrong. If we’re on earth for any reason at all, it must have something to do with what we make of our corporeal selves. This mortifying the flesh nonsense is just a cowardly refusal of the real challenge.”

For a moment, Harry couldn’t read Vivien. She seemed to be thinking about more than what Harry had just said.

“I agree with you there,” Vivien finally said. “About the body. St. Paul, was it, who said it’s better to marry than to burn. Well, if you can marry _and_ burn then bully for you; but I say at all costs, before you die, you must know what it is to burn.”

Somehow Vivien’s palm was resting on the back of Harry’s hand. One finger stroked Harry’s wrist, leaving behind a trail of little flames.

“Nevertheless,” said Vivien, with that taut smile. “At times, even where the body is concerned, detachment is advisable. Or even necessary.”

The server chose that moment to appear.

Vivien retracted her hand hurriedly, knocking her water glass off the table and into her lap.

Apologies, protestations, napkins fetched from other tables. While Vivien allowed the servers to do their best for her sodden dress, Harry quickly secured and paid the bill.

“Oh dear,” Vivien said, looking helplessly down at the dress that was now clinging to her thighs. “I’ll have to change. That is—if—I don’t know if—“

Harry gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“I was going to ask if you would like to join me for dinner,” Harry said. “But you’ll need either a rain check or a new outfit.”

“My place is just around the corner,” Vivien said, with a bright, hopeful smile. “We can stop in there, and I’ll change, and then we can go…you like Indian, I think I remember you saying.”

They fell into step together, out of the café and down the street. It was, in fact, just around the corner; a Georgian-era row house with a brick entrance and an elegant fanlight over the red painted door. Vivien unlocked it and held it open for Harry.

“Please come up. I won’t be long.”

Vivien ascended the staircase. Harry walked up behind her, feeling that tingle return.

“Make yourself at home,” Vivien said, showing her into a room off the first landing. “Back in a moment.”

Harry deposited herself and her bag on the loveseat in what seemed to be a kind of antechamber. Vivien crossed the floor, her heels clicking on the parquet, and withdrew through a door which must lead to her bedroom. The antechamber was small, but immaculate and quite formal in its décor. Butter-yellow walls painted with impressionistic fleur-de-lis, two sofas and an armchair, all with gracefully curved narrow legs and big tasseled silk-covered pillows compensating for the thinness and hardness of the antique upholstery.

It was more than a moment.

Harry was wondering whether Vivien had perhaps climbed out the window and vanished into the night when she finally heard a voice from the other side of the inner door.

“Harry…would you come in here, please? I want to ask your opinion on something.”

Harry rose and walked, with mixed emotions, toward the door.

On the other side of the door was another world. That was the only way to put it. A dim, flickering place built of fire and ice; gleaming and brilliant and at the same time permeated by a kind of perfumed haze. The floor was real marble, highly polished. The chair Vivien sat in, gilded like the throne of some Hapsburg monarch, had been drawn up to an equally rococo vanity table whose glass top doubled the riot of colored objects that spilled across it. A pair of silver candelabra, sinuous and tentacled as octopi, burned at each end of the vanity, their flames reflected in the glass perfume bottles and satin-lined jewelry boxes that littered the table. Flames crackled in the fireplace on the opposite wall, snapping in spurts of blue and lavender as well as orange. More candelabra burned on the mantelpiece, illuminating a statue of a dolphin leaping from the waves, also carved in marble. The center of the room was occupied by a bed with white satin sheets, piled high with a duvet and pillows done in peacock silk. Enough scents drifted through the air—from the bottles, from the candles, from the bowl of crumbling potpourri on an end table by the bed, even perhaps from the fire or from Vivien herself—to make Harry’s head swim. The echoing notes of a piano piece—Debussy, Harry thought—trickled in from an invisible source.

All this was reflected in an enormous mirror mounted on the wall behind the vanity. So was Vivien herself, gleaming in a white chiffon peignoir over a white lace bra and panties. She seemed to have been trying to decide on what jewelry to wear. Her collection was bursting out of the tiny boxes she had stored it in—gems of all colors, diamonds included, their facets sending fragments of candlelight to wheel up and down the walls and across the coffered ceiling.

Vivien’s hair was down, reaching to the center of her back. She brushed it, slowly, with an ivory-backed brush. Her dark tresses gleamed in the firelight, spreading in flickering across her white shoulders, dark and bright at the same time.

Harry’s sense of having walked onto a film set, or into the middle of a performance of a play, was so strong that Harry couldn’t help looking around for the audience. But as far as she could see, there were no cameras.

“Do you like it?” Vivien said, not to Harry but to Harry’s reflection in the mirror. She continued brushing her hair in long, languorous strokes. “This is my inner sanctum. I very rarely receive visitors here. I call it my _speluncam amoris._ ”

All this, and Latin too.

Harry found herself standing behind Vivien, looking at them both in the mirror. At least in looking-glass land, they didn’t look so very mismatched. Both dark-haired, both on the alert, both at the moment looking very solemn.

“So…what was it you wanted to ask me?” Harry said.

Vivien finished one of her brushstrokes and tossed the tress over her shoulder. “I just wanted to discuss plans for this evening,” she said. “Whether it might not make more sense just to order in.”

Vivien had removed the spectacles, of course. In the mirror, through the barely perceptible haze, the angles of her face were a little softened, the large eyes even more luminous. Harry felt her nerves vibrating like strings under a bow. It was a long time since she had been so close to any woman, let alone one as strange and beautiful as this one.

It was an effort to tear her eyes away from the mirror, and look one more time around the room. The wax dripping from the white candles burning in the candelabra. The driftwood making colored flames in the fireplace. The potpourri. The scents, the smoke, the music.

As Harry turned away, Vivien rose to her feet. Harry spun around to face her. Vivien laughed, and ran one hand along the feathered cuff of one of her long sleeves. She let the sleeve fall back to the elbow, reaching a white arm toward Harry’s face.

Harry took a step backward.  

“What’s the matter, Harry?” Vivien said, softly. “Are you afraid of me?”

Harry looked back at the red lips and the gleaming eyes and wondered, as the scents mingled in the air, what the answer to that question really was.

White chiffon rustled as Vivien drifted closer. Harry backed up toward the doorway.

“You know the danger in playing hard to get,” said Vivien, “is that the other player may tire of the game before you do.”

“No, that’s not the danger here,” Harry said. “I know exactly what you want and I have a fair idea of what you’re prepared to do to get it. And so, goodbye.”

“You’re _not_ leaving,” said Vivien, sharply.

“I am.”

“ _Why_?”

Harry knew perfectly well that the sensible thing to do was to walk away. Run, even. But there was a new note in that last cry that sounded really desperate; and she had never been able to ignore another woman’s pain, no matter how manufactured it might be.

“A wise woman once said,” Harry finally answered, “that the trouble with a disguise is that it always ends up being a self-portrait.”

Harry saw the recognition in the subtle tightening of Vivien’s jaw.

“A wiser woman might have added,” Harry went on, “that the trouble with a self-portrait is that it is always exaggerated, and usually idealized. It’s got very little do with who you really are. It’s about how you want to perceive yourself. Which may be very different from, even the complete opposite of, the way you want to be perceived by others.”

And here is where, Harry thought, in the version of my life that is not a nightmare, she would start calling me a lunatic and throw me out of the house. And that is not happening, is it.

“I really enjoyed my date with Vivien,” Harry said. “She was charming, and witty, and willing to talk seriously to someone she’d only just met, and in touch with her own body. She was that rare creature, an audacious intellectual who is also, one might say, an audacious sensualist. Even though no librarian would have treated a book the way she was handling that paperback, she really had read everything _._ It was such a pleasure to talk books with someone who really loves them. Clara was strictly digital media. John sticks to genre fiction, and Sherlock wouldn’t touch a novel even if you dipped it in nicotine. As for theology, forget it. I don’t think any of them have given the matter a single thought. I’ll treasure that date. It was like water in the desert.”

Harry was surprised to feel a real lump in her throat.

“I really clicked with Vivien,” Harry said. “I’m going to miss her.”

The woman in white looked back at her out of those large and, just perceptibly, narrowing eyes.

“But I don’t think you and I have a future together,” Harry said. “Do we, Irene?”

Harry was still hoping, after all this, that she might be wrong. That she might finally provoke cries of protest, denials, retractions, she’d say it was all a joke and maybe she and Vivien could go out for Indian after all. But instead there was this crushing silence, the feathery coils of perfumed smoke descending through the air, the hard line of those pursed red lips, and the way those red-nailed hands remained so ominously still. And all of it informed Harry that she had, unfortunately, got this one absolutely right.

END CHAPTER THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the whole Harry/Irene thing. 
> 
> I knew going into this that Irene Adler was going to be that scary woman from the beginning of TWL's "A Game of Chess" and that there would be some kind of confrontation between her and Harry in her lair. No idea when I started writing it what their interactions would actually be like. This si what I mean when I say that I find character stuff more fun to write than action. With action you know what has to happen and it's just about getting it done in an entertaining way. With character development there's always the chance tha tsomething will surprise you.
> 
> I'll be honest: I don't really like what _Sherlock_ did with Irene Adler, and as an episode I think "Scandal in Belgravia" is the weakest of the six. Or maybe I should say what Moffat did with her. But this is not unusual. I didn't like the Ritchieverse Irene Adler either. They always want to throw her into a romance with Sherlock and can't seem to appreciate the idea that their relationship might be one of mutual yet adversarial respect, which I find more compelling. Moffat ups the ante by making Irene Adler, canonically, a lesbian, and then immediately throwing her at Sherlock anyway.
> 
> But fanfiction is about making lemonade out of the lemons the show gives you; and by the time I was done with YMC I did really enjoy writing her. The date at Cafe Beckett was very important for me that way in terms of allowing me to have some sympathy with her. Even though Irene is of course deliberately deceiving and manipulating Harry, in my mind anyway what happens is that Irene goes into this thinking it's just another game, but discovers that she actually enjoys just having an ordinary date with another woman, something which probably doesn't happen to her too much. Harry, after all, is not stupid about people; and though she doesn't see through the ruse right away she's not wrong about hte signals of interest that she's picking up. So there is this moment at the beginning of their interaction where you can imagine that if Irene could ever actually stop playing games, this relationship might have a shot. She can't, of course. But what Harry says about how much she'll miss Vivien is true, and it my head anyway, it's mutual.
> 
> I also made her a bookworm, even though there's no evidence for it in canon. Because how can you not sympathize with a bookworm.
> 
> The reason they're talking about Buddhism at the end of the date has to do with the fact that this section of TWL is named after Buddha's "Fire Sermon." But it also moves the conversation to a new level, because Irene is actually interested in these questions about detachment and the body. So it's even more of a shame that things have to take the turn they take at the beginning of Chapter 4.


	4. DEATH BY WATER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started adding illustrations. There's one at the end of this chapter. Some illustrations are spoilers.

IV            DEATH BY WATER

Possibly it was psychological; but to Harry it seemed that the double-crossing dominatrix formerly known as Vivien was transforming before her eyes. Now that Harry knew that the woman in white standing before her was named Irene Adler, her face seemed more angular, the scarlet lipstick more lurid, the white teeth sharper. The white peignoir with its enormous feather-trimmed sleeves and the silken cord tied negligently at the waist started to seem like a robe worn by the devotees of some strange but deadly branch of the martial arts. Even the high-heeled white satin marabou mules she’d slipped on looked as if they could be weaponized.

“Oh, let’s not discuss the future, Harry,” said Irene. “Not when the present moment is so interesting.”

Indeed, Harry wished that she had made the present moment a little less interesting. Specifically, she wished that instead of making that little speech she had run away. With Irene standing there on the alert by her gilded throne, Harry wasn’t sure whether--if she made a break for it--she would get to the door before Irene did. 

Irene folded her arms across her ribs, just under her breasts. Each hand disappeared into the opposite sleeve. From the shape of her mouth she appeared more amused than anything else.  
  
“Harry Watson,” Irene said, leaning back a little to rest her hips against the edge of the vanity. “The newest recruit to Sherlock Holmes’s band of merry men. Sherlock is the brains of the outfit, obviously…your brother, bless his heart, is the brawn…and you are what? The girl who makes the tea?”

“I’m Harriet Watson, Attorney at Law,” Harry said. “If you need a will made, or you want advice about estate management, or you have other questions about end of life issues, make an appointment and we’ll talk Monday. Otherwise, good-bye.”

Harry started toward the door, but Irene was already moving to block her path. Harry stopped, considering what to do next. It was difficult to concentrate. Apart from the adrenaline and the Debussy that was still tinkling incongruously in the background, the thickening streams of scented smoke seemed to be fogging her brain.

“I really can’t let you say goodbye this way,” Irene said, flashing those disconcerting teeth. “I’ve been so looking forward to this. I meant exactly what I said, at the café. You’re not at all what I’d expected. From Clara I had the impression that you were a crashing bore.”

“Most drunkards are,” Harry said. “I have stated my intention to leave twice. If you physically prevent me from going you will put yourself in a very precarious legal position.”

Evidently the most infuriating thing about Irene Adler was the way she looked at you, when you were doing your best to be intimidating, as if you were one of those kittens in the pictures on the Internet.

“I can think of at least seven precarious positions I could put you in,” Irene said, with a little lift of the eyebrows.

 “Oh, _please,_ ” Harry snapped.

“Pleading already.” Irene smiled, tracing a curve in the chair back with one caressing hand. “This date isn’t turning out so badly after all.”

“Look,” Harry said, resorting in desperation to the tone of voice she usually reserved for especially vile opposing counsel. “This was never a date. You’ve been using e-Lesbos to cultivate me ever since my name started turning up in the papers next to Sherlock and John’s. But that’s only because you wanted to get your hooks back into Sherlock and I, God help me, am the only member of his inner circle who doesn’t—or didn’t—know you by sight. You couldn’t have known then that I would be the one to buy the Golden Chicken; but from your friend Ryder you heard that I had; and once she failed to find the stone at my apartment, the next step was obvious. Clearly I was carrying it with me; so you set up a date with ‘Vivien,’ confident that once you got me into the Love Cave you’d get the jewel off me one way or another. Well, that’s not in the cards now. The seduction is no longer on, and I certainly will not submit to a strip search.”

Irene gave her a slow, appraising look.

“Give me fifteen minutes,” Irene said, “and I could make you submit to nearly anything.”

Harry made another motion toward the door. Irene matched it immediately. Harry knew her pulse was rising. She only hoped she wasn’t sweating visibly.

“Oh, let’s not do this the hard way,” Irene said, in a tone that sounded disarmingly like Vivien’s. “Live a little, Harry. There are powerful men all over this city who would pay handsomely to be in your shoes right now. Why waste the opportunity? You don’t have to be so _very_ sober in _all_ things. I mean, yes, certainly, I’m after your jewel. But giving it up doesn’t _have_ to be an unpleasant experience.”

Irene began gliding slowly toward her, with a menacing swing in her hips.

“I’ll see to it that you enjoy the contest thoroughly,” Irene purred. “Especially the part where you lose.”

Harry darted for the door. She had one hand around the knob when she felt a stinging pain sear a line along her wrist. Harry was still clutching the doorknob and watching the red weal rise when she felt the same sting on the back of her neck. Belatedly, Harry recognized the sound of something long, narrow, and elastic ripping through the air—just before the riding crop came down on her arm.

“Sherlock should have told you,” Irene said calmly, “never to turn your back on an adversary.”

The thing seemed to be coming at her from everywhere. The hand Harry clutched the doorknob with became a throbbing mass of pain. Only when her knees cracked against the marble and sent new shooting pains through her legs did Harry realize she had dropped to the floor. Ahead of her she could see only those high-heeled white satin shoes, planted wide so Irene could draw plenty of power for her whip hand.

Another slash across the back of her neck. The pain ignited the fear and burned it into rage.

Harry locked both hands around one of Irene’s ankles and wrenched it sideways.

Irene’s foot came off the floor. Another twist and Irene toppled over, her head striking the vanity before crashing down onto the polished marble floor.

Harry grabbed the riding crop and threw it into the driftwood fire. Irene got to her knees, holding her head in both hands. Harry sprinted through the door into the antechamber, pulling it shut behind her. She snatched her bag up from the sofa and made her way, with all the welts still throbbing, down the stairs.

Upstairs, the door to the Cave of Love banged open.

The stairs were steep and narrow, but with the speed of desperation Harry got down them and to the front door and, fuck, two deadbolts and a chain. She got them both undone and had the door actually open when she heard a voice behind her, with that desperate edge.

“Harry, _wait! Please!”_

Cursing herself, Harry turned, keeping one hand on the knob of the open door. Irene was standing in her bare feet on the bottom step. The peignoir had been left behind. No doubt it was by design that Harry was getting her first good look at Irene’s shape. And maybe it would have had the desired effect, if Harry’s entire body were not consumed with rage.

 “I’m sorry, Irene,” Harry said. “If you imagine that your lingerie is going to keep me here after what just happened, then you have mistaken me for someone who has a dick to think with.”

Irene made a noise of exasperation. “You have no idea what’s at stake here.”

That much was true. Lorelei Lee Logic alone could not explain Irene’s investment in the blue carbuncle. There was enough ice in the jewelry boxes littering that vanity upstairs to support Irene through seven retirements. This was not about money. It was about something much darker and more complicated.

“Well, do you want to tell me what’s at stake, Irene, or are you going to carry on with the arch insinuations and the feeble single-entendres?”

“Close the door.”

“Not on your life.”

Irene backed up to the middle of the staircase and sat down on the step.

“Close it, Harry,” she said. “It’s perfectly safe. I’ll stay right here. You stay by the door. If I make a move you’ll be out before I get near you, and I don’t like you _nearly_ well enough to chase you down a public street in my unmentionables.”

Harry pushed the door closed and backed up against it, folding her arms over her vest.

“All right then,” she said. “Make it quick.”

Irene took a deep breath.

“Ryder’s been working for me since I got back to London,” Irene said. “Some clients like to play two-against-one, and some like to bring a friend along; so I took on Ryder as a kind of apprentice. She’s good at the work, and she enjoys it; but she’s a thief. Well, one of my clients works for the British Museum. Those dry little professors can be quite generous, once you know what they like. He gave me the carbuncle, and Ryder stole it from me. Then, somehow, she lost control of the thing. Well, the client’s in trouble and he wants it back now. He has no right to it; but he’s threatening to turn me over to the authorities if I don’t return it. I can’t have that. If they ever get me in their power, that phone will be the death of me. If they didn’t believe that I was dead in Pakistan, I’d be in a windowless cell right now being done over by your friend Mycroft.”

“Mycroft Holmes,” Harry bit off, “is not my friend.”

There was a moment while Irene seemed to accept and even in some way thank Harry for her anger. Then the tale of woe resumed.

“Ryder’s done her best to recover it for me. But she’s failed. And if I fail too…”

Irene put a hand up to her mouth. Tears trembled, but did not spill.

“When did you discover it was missing?”

Irene blinked back the tears and lifted her chin. “About…about a month ago.”

“How did you find out?”

“I looked in the box and it wasn’t there.”

“Describe the box you kept it in.”

Irene brushed an eyebrow back into place, then said, “It’s a square box with a hinged lid, made of mahogany inlaid with poplar wood and lined with violet silk.”

“Which side of the table do you keep it on?”

“The left-hand side.”

“What else is on the left side of the vanity table?”

“Several other jewelry boxes…some bottles of scent…a few lotions and things…”

“What does your client do in the British Museum?”

“He’s a curator.”

“What time of day was it when the carbuncle went missing?”

“Early morning.”

“Rubbish. Why would you even be looking for it in the early morning?”

“I wasn’t. I sit at the vanity to do my _toilette_ , and I happened to see a ray of sun shining through the glass walls of the box, and I saw it was empty.”

“You said you kept it in a wooden box.”

Irene’s mouth snapped shut.

“And bang goes that story,” Harry said. “Don’t feel too bad. Habitual liars often fall apart on cross. The more you enjoy making it up, the harder it is to know when to stop.”

“Ryder does work for me,” Irene insisted.

“If she does, she’s not front of house. Most of those powerful men who would so love to be in my shoes right now have zero erotic interest in a woman like Ryder. You’d have kept her and whatever she does for you well behind the scenes. So what does she do for you? Apart from play Dido and Aeneas up in the _speluncam amoris_?”

Irene smiled. “She’s very willing, but she doesn’t really know the text. I’m sure you’d be better.”

“What does Ryder do for you?” Harry repeated.

Irene made a sharp, truncated movement with one hand. Reaching, Harry thought, for a cigarette that wasn’t there.

“She’s a supplier.”

“Of what?”

“For valued clients,” Irene said, “I sometimes augment the sensory experience with chemical stimuli.”

“So Ryder’s your dealer,” Harry said, thinking of the twenty-pound chicken now rotting in her rubbish bin. “Heroin, by chance?”

That nettled her.

“Trying to enhance the type of experience I provide by taking heroin,” Irene observed loftily, “is like trying to enhance French cuisine by topping it with jalapenos.”

“So what then? Morphine? Laudanum? Poppy-head tea?”

“It’s nothing you’ve ever heard of,” Irene snapped. “Ryder’s created a drug of her own. There’s nothing else like it. It’s peculiarly suited to my work and it gets _devastating_ results. It’s not addictive, and properly administered it’s not harmful. The clients love it.”

“And yet…” Harry prompted, as her stomach turned.

Irene’s voice dropped a couple of pitches and acquired a rougher edge.

“Ryder didn’t steal that thing from me; but she did steal it. And then she lost it and now she is in _far_ more trouble than she bargained for. She’s been out of her mind trying to get it back. She thought she _finally_ had a way to recover it and it went to you instead. She asked me to help her. Hence all this. If she doesn’t return the carbuncle to the people she took it from, _today_ , her life is over.”

“So who are these people?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You bloody well can.”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“I’m not going to cross-examine you again. I’m afraid you might start to enjoy it.”

“I do know who they are but I can’t tell you. It would be disastrous. You don’t understand the situation.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” Harry said. “But you don’t want me to understand it, so there’s no point in talking. Goodbye.”

“Give it to me, Harry,” Irene cried, rising to her feet. “You don’t need it, you don’t want it. All it’s brought you is trouble. Give it to me. Give it to me and save a woman’s life.”

“Pleading already,” Harry said.

The stinger seemed to take something out of Irene. She put one hand on the banister and turned her head to look down at it, exhausted. It was a gesture that vividly recalled Clara. There had been these moments, in some of their longer and more vicious battles, when all at once Clara appeared to sicken of her own game—and her own compulsion to go on playing it.

Without understanding why, Harry thought of a moment from the first days of her recovery. Standing in her kitchen, staring through her open cupboard door at a bottle of vanilla extract that contained the only drinkable alcohol left in the apartment, it had come to her: Just because your enemy says it, that doesn’t mean it’s not true. The fact that someone hates you, or misunderstands you, or is actively trying to harm you, does not mean that everything that person says is always wrong. For instance, just because the bastard who fathered you believed that drink was inherently and absolutely evil, that didn’t mean that, in your particular case, it wasn’t. Similarly, just because John routinely said things to you about your drinking that were not only untrue but intentionally cruel, that did not mean that you did not in fact have a drinking problem. The fact that it enraged you to hear your only intermittently sober mother implore you to give up the drink did not mean that it wasn’t a good idea. And the fact that Irene Adler’s mouth never opened except in an attempt to manipulate someone did not necessarily mean that everything that came through it was false.

 “I can’t give you the carbuncle, Irene,” Harry finally said. “I’ve already turned it over to the police.”

Irene collapsed onto the step.

“The police,” Irene murmured, vacantly.

There were no tears. The color simply drained from Irene’s face. The blush she’d applied to her cheekbones stood out like the imprint of scarlet fever. Shoulders slumped, Irene stared into the space ahead of her, at a vision of the future that filled her with sorrow and despair. Belladonna, between a rock and a hard place, contemplating with a strange kind of relief the tragic outcome of a desperate situation.

They faced each other silently over the black and white tiles of the entryway. Harry had finally taken the queen; now the question was how to end the game.

“Ryder could have asked me,” Harry said. “When she found out I had it. She could have come to me and told me what was at stake and asked for my help. You could have done the same, instead of letting the riding crop do the talking.”

“You wouldn’t have believed her,” Irene said, dully. With her elbows on her knees and her hands dangling listless between them, she looked the picture of defeat. “You wouldn’t have believed me. You don’t believe me now.”

In the space that it took Harry to think of her next move, she seemed to pass through all the stages of her life. All the antagonists she had ever faced, from her father to her mother to Clara to John to Lestrade to Mycroft and back in the end to the interminable string of opposing counsel facing her across an infinite procession of conference tables. All the times she’d seen a family ruined—love burnt and blackened, ties cut and left bleeding, brothers and sisters slowly but surely becoming mortal enemies—because two people, one on each side, could not let go of some wretched piece of property. She had seen a whole family go up in smoke over a dining room set that was not worth what her client was paying her to fight for it. Often the thing itself was less important than the client’s fear of being done out of something rightfully his. All this pain because nobody wanted to be the first to let go. After Sherlock’s fall, Harry had made the arrangements and booked the hotel room and filled up those string bags with the ingredients for John’s favorite soup and gone out to John’s sad little bedsit and pressed the buzzer and walked in even though he wouldn’t answer and banged on the door and refused to leave until he let her in because she was finally ready to let go. To let him win all the arguments, have it his way, say whatever he needed to say to vomit up the anger so that he could open up just enough to allow her to help him. And then last night—Christ almighty, was it only last night?—he had held her and told her that he too was ready to let go.

 “I’ll tell you what I believe,” Harry said.

Irene looked up. In her eyes there was no curiosity, no expectation, nothing but the wish for this all to be over. But in Harry’s mind, the elements were finally coming together, in a reaction that generated flash after startling flash of light.

“You keep telling this as a story about two people,” Harry said. “But it’s really a story about three people.”

Irene’s breath caught for a moment.

“Somebody’s life is riding on this,” Harry said. “But it’s not yours. If your life were really at stake you wouldn’t take the time to amuse yourself by playing with me. It’s not Ryder’s either. You care about what Ryder can do for you, but you don’t give a damn about Ryder herself. It’s another woman’s life at stake—a woman who is _not_ your lover precisely because you _do_ love her. A woman like you. A woman you identify with. A woman who’s been into battle with you.”

In Irene’s eyes there was a flicker—maybe—of relief, before the anger sparked.

“A young, adoring, intense, deeply romantic woman with long, dark hair who took to the two-girl games you hired her for as quickly as she took to knitting,” she said, as Irene’s face became a mask. “A woman who, tragically, does _not_ love you—because she loves Ryder instead.”

Harry was pulling it together as she went along; but she felt more certain of all this with every word she spoke. Because Irene’s body contracted into a bundle of tension; because Irene’s eyes were burning; but more than anything else, because Irene seemed for the first time to be actually afraid of Harry.

“The woman you _did_ take on as your apprentice. _That_ ’s the woman you’re so desperate to save. She’s being held prisoner and the blue carbuncle is her ransom. You’re helping Ryder find the blue carbuncle because you want _that_ woman to live. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. But part of you doesn’t want that. Part of you wants the woman you love to be lost forever—because her death is the only thing that will solve _your_ problem.”

Irene sprang to her feet, one hand clutching the banister, the other clenching into a fist.

“How _dare_ you!”

It was imposing, Irene Adler’s anger. Harry could understand why that phrase said in that tone of command had sent so many deliciously terrifying shivers up the spines of tycoons and judges and CIA operatives and MI5 agents. But they hadn’t known what Harry now knew.

“The kindest thing I could do for you right now,” said Harry, “is walk out of here without saying another word.”

Burning with hatred, Irene said, “At last we agree on something.”

“But kindness is not what a beating brings out in me, Irene.”

Irene’s eyebrows lifted in confusion as Harry slipped a hand under her own vest and between the buttons of her silk shirt. Harry worked two fingers between her skin and the underwire of her bra. Her fingertips found the hard, faceted stone still wedged where she’d put it--right under her left breast--before she walked out of her apartment.

Irene took in a breath that was almost a gasp.

Harry drew her hand out of her shirt, and held the blue carbuncle up to the light coming in from the fanlight in the front door.

Irene made a fast try at recovery. “I _knew_ you were lying.”  

“You didn’t,” Harry said. “But that’s just as well for all concerned.”

Harry tossed the carbuncle onto the entryway floor. It gave a little hop, and rolled to rest on one of the white tiles. That would be some kind of omen, Harry thought, if only I was sure which side I was playing.

“Your move, Irene,” Harry said. “Pick up the piece and solve the problem. I’m out of the game. I always hated chess.”

Irene Adler stared at the stone shining on the tiles, frozen where she stood. If she held her breath, Harry thought, she might be able to hear the wheels turning in Irene’s head.

As soon as Irene moved, Harry slipped through the door. She slammed it shut behind her. Nothing followed her down the street toward her car. As she hustled, taking care to stay in the most brightly lit part of the sidewalk, Harry pulled out her phone and turned it back on. The notification screen lit up like a pinball machine. Nineteen missed calls, seven voicemails, and eleven text messages, all from Dr. John H. Watson.

Harry checked her car carefully for anything that might be part of a car bomb. Then she got into the driver’s seat, locked herself in, and called John’s number.

“Harry!” John shouted. “Thank God. I’ve been trying to get you for an hour. Vivien—she’s not a date—it’s a set-up—to get the stone off you—Sherlock thought the point was just to get you out of the house so they could break in and we could catch them at it, we didn’t know you had it on you—“

“John, I know.”

In the background, she though she could hear Sherlock laugh.

“You know?”

“I know. I’m all right and I’m alone and I’m safe.”

John let out an explosive breath.

“John,” Harry said, leaning over a little to keep the front entrance of Irene’s house in her sight line, “will you put me on speaker, please?”  

“Tell me what is going on, Harry,” John demanded.

There was a brief scuffle.

“Go ahead, Harry,” said Sherlock’s voice. “Don’t mind him.”

“Sherlock,” Harry said. “First of all, I want to take back what I said about you and the hat. Every last one of those observations turned out to be extremely useful. They may in fact have saved my life. It’s only because of your description that I figured out in time that ‘Vivien’ was the woman in whose boudoir Ryder’s been hanging her hat. So thank you, Sherlock, for being an obsessive hat-sniffing freak. And if ever again I rag you for letting your freak flag fly, all you have to do is whisper the word ‘Vivien.’ ”

“Enough palaver,” Sherlock snapped. “You’re about to tell me I was wrong about something. I can hear it in your voice. Out with it now so that I may begin eviscerating you  
immediately.” There was a noise from John. “Logically speaking, of course.”

“We don’t have time,” Harry snapped.

“Why not?”

“Because I just gave the blue carbuncle to Irene Adler.”

The first thing to break the silence was a scream of outrage from John.

“IRENE BLOODY ADLER?”

“John—“ Sherlock interjected.

“THAT’S who ‘Vivien’ is? You let Harry go off on a _date_ with That Woman? You son of a--”

“Shut up, John,” Sherlock said. “We are in crisis mode and every second counts. I am sorely disappointed in you, Harry. You have been played.”

“Yes, Irene Adler played me,” Harry shouted back. “And now I am playing her. And she knows I’m playing her, but she will let me do it. And if you will both be quiet for one moment I will tell you why.”

*             *             *

Molly had ordered a currant scone and split pea soup, but she hadn’t touched either. She was too busy staring at the map of London that Lestrade had laid out across the orange formica tabletop. The many smells assailing Molly inside this tiny space were vaguely unsavory, mingled with the disinfectant wafting off the vinyl seats. Lestrade seemed to have no difficulty wolfing down a tuna sandwich with one hand while marking up the map with the other. They had made a circuit of the park perimeter—they were closing, but Lestrade had talked them past the staff, without even using his badge—in hopes of finding the place where the Hyacinth Girl had entered the park. What they discovered, unfortunately, were a dozen places where _someone_ had recently gained unauthorized entry—probably, Lestrade had said, for nothing more nefarious than snogging. They had fallen back to a nearby restaurant, not noticing until they entered how shabby and deserted it was. After the ancient, decrepit, and vaguely creepy waiter had taken their order, Lestrade had commandeered Molly’s phone. His own battery was still dead.

“So according to what I’ve been able to dig up from estate agents’ websites, all of these here,” he said, tracing the pen over a broken hemicircle of X marks bordering the river, “are short-term rental properties owned by corporations. They’re out. I think we’re safe in ignoring commercial property.” More crosses bloomed in blue ink around the park perimeter. “We want a house, not a flat—you can’t hide a captive in a flat for a month--so that takes care of all these…and the crime scene is _likely_ to be in an area of comparatively low density, though of course nothing is guaranteed. If we…”

Molly had been nodding along, leaning over the map. The silence made her stop and look up.

Greg’s eyes had that soft, dark look she remembered from the night before. She wondered if she should lean closer.

“I’m sorry, Molly,” Lestrade said, softly. “But we can’t do this part together.”

His tone was so gentle it took her a minute to understand what he said.

“But…I thought we weren’t going to worry about things being irregular?”

“Irregular is one thing, irresponsible is another,” Lestrade said. “We think they’ve abandoned the place but we don’t know for certain. We know these people are ruthless and it’s likely they’re armed. If they’re surprised they’ll turn violent. I can’t risk your getting hurt.”

“I see,” Molly said, as her throat constricted. “You’re ditching me.”

“ _No_ , Molly. It’s not like that.”

“I’m good enough to go through rubbish bins and follow you all around the city but you won’t let me see it through to the end. Just because I’m a girl.”

“Not because you’re a girl,” Lestrade said, raising his voice. “Because you’re a civilian.”

“Sherlock’s a civilian.”

“Sherlock has combat skills.”

“Really,” Molly said. “How?”

“He’s self-taught—I mean what dojo would put up with the bugger—sorry—the point is—“

“Sherlock brings John into all kinds of—“

“John’s not a civilian, Molly.”

Molly was dimly aware that twenty-four hours ago she would have accepted this meekly and even gratefully. Indeed, somewhere inside her the Molly of yesterday was telling her to stop, was she insane, did she want her head blown off and anyway anger is unladylike and very unattractive.

“Sherlock let Harry investigate those--” Molly insisted.

“Yes,” Lestrade said, slapping his hand onto the map with a sound that made Molly flinch. “Sherlock sent Harry running all over London investigating a bleeding underworld criminal empire and what happened to Harry when said criminals found her?”

In the face of Lestrade’s outburst, the Molly of Yesterday began to assert control.

“I don’t…I’m not sure I…”

“She got captured. And were it not for the great good luck that follows Sherlock Holmes wherever he goes, she would have been tortured and most likely killed.” Lestrade threw the remains of the sandwich onto the plate. “That is what happens when you send a civilian into that situation, and that is what will _not_ happen to you tonight.”

Molly knew he was right. But her throat was pricking and her eyes were stinging and she couldn’t understand exactly why she wanted so badly not to be left behind.

“You can’t go by Sherlock, Molly,” Lestrade said, switching from commanding to pleading. “When Sherlock’s on a case, all he cares about is the solution. Once he gets the bit between his teeth he’ll do anything to get the answer. He doesn’t care if it’s safe or responsible or even really a good idea. The things he’s put John through—I can’t even—have you read John’s post about the Cornish Horror?”

Molly shook her head.

“Well, don’t. It’ll make it a lot harder for you to look at Sherlock without punching him in the face.”

“I’ve never punched anyone in the face,” Molly said, faintly.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Lestrade replied. “I mean it’s not malicious, with Sherlock. It’s just that when he’s working a case the human race becomes a collection of instruments that he either can or cannot use to solve the puzzle. He will send his nearest and dearest into mortal peril without giving a thought to the consequences, the same way you use a scalpel without wondering how it feels. I can’t do that. There are people I’m responsible for, whose job it is to follow my orders and whose lives I have to take seriously. But even with them--I mean if Donovan gets shot one day on my watch it’ll be horrible but she knew the risks when she signed up. If I get _you_ shot…I mean, do you think that solving this mystery is worth your death? Because I don’t.”

He was right. About this, and about Sherlock too. Knowing that burst something open. As the tears sprang to her eyes, her hands began moving frantically about in the air the words tumbled out.

“I know you’re right but I don’t—you shouldn’t have—you should have just gone, this morning, you should have run away like you wanted to, like everyone does, I don’t know how what I’m supposed to do but how am I to learn if everyone just leaves as soon as they find out I’ve never and if this is how you feel you shouldn’t have ever let me think—you shouldn’t have pretended we were a team—you shouldn’t have been nice to me just out of pity—I don’t want pity—I hate being pitied—that’s why I liked Sherlock, he has no pity—you do—it’s worse that way—you shouldn’t have pretended you liked me—you should have just--“

Her hands were flat on the table, palms down. Lestrade’s were on top of hers. He kept her hands still, with just a little pressure, while his voice said, “Stop, Molly. Stop right there.”

Molly stopped talking, though the unsaid things continued to hum inside her, buzzing so loudly she could hardly hear him.

“What happened last night was not your fault,” he said. The corners of his mouth were trembling a little. “I suppose…if you’ve never…I suppose that probably you’ve never seen this happen before. Sometimes…”

The buzzing quieted down. Molly could see how much pain Lestrade was in at this moment. It was not exactly that it showed. He was hanging onto the calm, patient, receptive face he’d worn all day. She wondered how it was that she detected the shame that was radiating from him as he worked himself up to say what he had to say.

“The reason we didn’t…do the deed last night…was that I couldn’t, Molly. I couldn’t…physically…it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I did want to. But sometimes…and of course the drink didn’t help, it never does. But sometimes…lately…”

Molly knew that something very important was happening but she was not entirely sure what. The words Lestrade was using were ordinary enough but she was not understanding them properly.

Lestrade gathered his forces for another try.

“In plain language, Molly,” Lestrade said, “ever since things began to go to the dogs with Wendy I have had the occasional spot of…”

She watched him looking at her and trying to choose the words.

“Sometimes, Molly, the male…equipment…just malfunctions. It won’t do the job. And…that’s what happened. Last night.”

The penny dropped.

Her first impulse was simply to implode from embarrassment. But he looked so hurt, and so sad, and the wave of humiliation emanating from him was so familiar.

“It’s psychological,” Lestrade babbled on. “I mean I’m sound as a bell, medically. It’s my head. The stress of the divorce or something. I don’t know. I should have explained why…but it’s so…I mean I’m nearly dying saying this now…and I thought you knew. I thought just weren’t saying anything out of…well…pity.”

Molly turned her hands palm up and grasped Lestrade’s. Bits and pieces of the night before and the morning after and the day they’d just had began to wheel and turn and fall into a kaleidoscopic pattern as inscrutable as ever but shining now with a hidden and strange light.

“It…this never used to happen to me, before this business with Wendy,” Lestrade said, returning her touch. “We’ve been, Christ how did Wendy put it, ‘free to experiment’ with other people since Christmas but…once this started happening, I just gave up. Too much risk of humiliation. You are the first woman in three months who has made me want to take that risk.”

In her daydreams this was not how Molly had ever imagined it—a poky little riverside tourist trap, the smell of oversalted pea soup, a dusty currant scone, sticky vinyl upholstery, and a silver-haired man at least ten years her senior gripping her hands really a little too hard across a rumpled map of London. But the shudder in her heart and the twist in her throat told her to throw out the fairy tales and the rom-coms and the royal wedding photos and every single thing her mother had ever told her. When It Happened, that wasn’t how it looked. It looked like this.

 “You hate pity, fine, I hate it too,” Lestrade said. “That is not what this is. I went out with you last night because I wanted to. Because I liked the way it felt, being with you, and I wanted it to go on. I went home with you last night because I wanted to. Because I really wanted to. I bungled it because that’s just what I do. I’m a bungler. I would have slunk off in the dead of night only I didn’t want to give up and you didn’t throw me out and eventually I fell asleep. And then that arrogant fucker rings me this morning and I’m into it with him on the phone before I even know where I am and then I saw you and—and I remembered it all at once, the bungling. It was terrible.”

He swallowed. He was looking at her, waiting, desperate for some kind of response.

“I didn’t know,” Molly said. “I’ve never…I mean I’ve had…dates…I’ve done…some things…but I was always so busy, at university and postgrad and after and I just thought…that you’d got bored, or something. Because I wasn’t doing it right.”

“No, Molly,” Lestrade said, pressing her hands a little harder. “Trust me. I was not bored.”

It really was as if, just because she was holding his hands and looking at him, she knew what he was thinking. He must have known what she was thinking, because he cracked a smile at last.

“Jesus,” he said, relaxing his grip but not letting go. “You grow up and you think you’re getting smarter but it’s all still a fucking mystery, isn’t it?”

She heard her laugh ringing out, loud and unembarrassed and happy. He laughed too, and then after a while they went silent.

“Listen, Molly,” Lestrade said. “You wait here and I’ll take a look around the most likely areas and if I haven’t found the place in an hour I’ll come back here. And then we can go have a _real_ dinner, at a place where the wait staff won’t drool in the soup. Can we do that?”

Molly nodded bravely. “All right.”

“So I’ll see you soon,” Lestrade reassured her, finally letting go of her hands so he could fold up the map. “You won’t vanish on me, now.”

She looked up at him as he stood. “I’ll wait here till you get back.”

“Right then,” Lestrade said, zipping up his jacket. “Wish me luck.”

Instead of answering, Molly stood up. She bumped against the table and the weight of her handbag on the back of the chair toppled it over, but she paid no attention. She lunged toward him, grabbing onto his shoulders for balance, and hoped as she closed her eyes that her mouth would land in the right place.

At first all she could feel was the beating of her startled heart. Then her heart seemed to be rhyming with the motion of his mouth, answering each movement of his lips and each stroke of his tongue. She clung to his shoulders as he cupped the side of her head in one hand, steadying her while with each pulse her heart seemed to take up more of her body, until everything from her feet to her fingertips was throbbing to the same beat.

She drew back, at last. Lestrade took her head between both hands, and his mouth opened softly in something unlike his usual half-smile.

“I won’t be long, Molly,” he said. “I’ve got all the luck in the world, now.”

She watched him go, not sure whether the tears she felt welling up were joy or fear. She resumed her chair, somehow. She didn’t really notice much of anything until she saw the waiter hovering by the table, favoring her with an insinuating smile.

“Can I get you anything more?” he said, in a vaguely Continental accent.

She’d need the table for, maybe, another hour.

“Yes…I’d like a cheese sandwich, please.”

“Certainly,” he said, with an insinuating smile. “Take your time. No hurry. I was young once, too, and in love. I remember when I was no more than a boy--“

“No,” Molly said, firmly. “I mean, what I mean is, instead of the cheese sandwich, I’ll have the chicken curry. Please.”

He sniffed, and went away, his anecdote untold. Just because she had spoken to him a little sharply. Molly looked down at her soup, stirring it with a spoon, so he wouldn’t see her smiling. The Molly of Yesterday could kick up all the racket she wanted. The Molly of Today had emerged victorious. There would be no going back.

*             *             *             *

Sherlock, evidently, knew exactly where they were. All John knew was that he was stumbling around in a dark laneway behind another row of posh houses. Darkness had fallen. They had, accordingly, both dressed like stagehands, except that Sherlock had thrown that coat on over his basic black—well, it was dark enough--and John had covered his inconveniently fair hair with a black knitted cap. Both were wearing black woolen gloves. Sherlock stared up at the roof of a garage that backed up to the laneway, apparently assessing the height and structural integrity of its flat tin roof.

“Right.” Sherlock dropped to one knee and held out his joined hands, palms up, fingers interlaced. “Step up and I’ll toss you onto the roof.”

John looked up at it. “Shouldn’t I boost you? You’re lighter.”

“And stronger, which is precisely why I should be the one climbing the drainpipe. Come on.”

John stepped onto Sherlock’s thigh, struggling for balance until he put his other foot into the cradle made by Sherlock’s joined hands. Sherlock, now about eye level with John’s belt buckle, looked up at him in such a way that both hesitated.

“If we made it quick—“ John began.

“No,” Sherlock said, with a little shake of the head.

“Right. Well, get me up.”

Strong as Sherlock was, the boost wasn’t all that generous. John got his arms and most of his chest up onto the roof, but his nether half had to shift for itself. He had just barely hauled his hips and knees, quite painfully, over the edge when he heard Sherlock land on the tiles, lightly as an antelope springing from a rock.

They lay flat on their stomachs. Sherlock took off his coat and spread it over both of them. Concealing as much of their faces with their black-gloved hands as they could, they looked out over the edge of the garage roof. From their vantage point could see over the back garden wall into the rear windows of the house opposite. The blinds were drawn, but the lights in the first and second storey were on.

“So,” John whispered. “That’s Irene Adler’s new address.”

Sherlock put his lips to John’s ear. “Any noise might give us away. Keep conversation to a minimum.”

“At a minimum,” John whispered back, “you need to tell me what we are doing here.”

Sherlock’s jaw clenched. “I explained in the cab.”

“Irene Adler has the carbuncle and she’s going to hand it off to the men who are supposed to be holding this other woman captive,” John repeated. “Harry’s watching the front entrance of the house from her car, we’re watching the rear entrance, so that if she leaves or someone enters, someone will see and we can give chase. Why? Why don’t we just notify the authorities that the carbuncle is in there and let them take it?”

“We are not employed by the British Museum, John. We are not here to recover their property; we are here to solve a mystery. And the mystery of the blue carbuncle’s last few weeks, though it does grow a bit lighter, remains extremely puzzling.”

In an effort to keep conversation to a minimum, John tried to focus his mind on the glowing windows in the Georgian façade, on the muted sounds of London traffic, on the warmth of Sherlock’s body, pressed close against him. But his mind kept coming back to the greatest mystery of all: Sherlock had accepted Harry’s claim that he had been wrong about something.

“Sherlock.”

“Loose lips sink ships, John.”

“You really think Harry’s right and you were wrong?”

There was a short hiss, and the whisper, when it resumed, was more aggressively sibilant.

“I was correct in all the details. I made one eminently reasonable conjecture which happens not to be factually true. The laws of probability dictate that this is bound to happen occasionally, even to me. I assumed, from the obvious evidence of a physical separation between Ryder and her primary lover, that the affair had ended. What Harry infers from her interesting chat with Irene Adler is that Ryder and her true love _were_ in fact separated, but not by choice. Ryder’s lover was, according to Harry’s theory, taken hostage by what we might call the original thieves—the people who stole the jewel from the British Museum shipment, and the people from whom Ryder stole the jewel in turn. They are offering to trade the lover’s life for the carbuncle.”

“And That Woman is in love with Ryder’s lover,” John whispered.

“If by ‘That Woman’ you mean Irene Adler, then yes.”

“But Ryder’s lover doesn’t love That Woman. She loves Ryder.”

“Tautological, but correct,” Sherlock whispered. “Ryder would gladly ransom her lover, but she no longer has the carbuncle because for some reason, soon after Ryder stole it, it was fed to a chicken. From the fact that Ryder has not recovered it before now we can deduce that she has been cut off—quite severely—from the family and from the farm. Obviously Ryder’s plan was to intercept the chicken in question when her family brought it to market; but Harry got to it first. After failing to recover the jewel in Harry’s apartment, Ryder turned to Irene Adler for help. Irene Adler then made the date with Harry, planning to take the carbuncle from her either by seduction or by force or by both, I suppose, if she was feeling playful.”

“Playful,” John muttered, forgetting in his irritation to whisper.

“Do keep your voice down.”

“But why do you believe Harry’s theory?” John whispered fiercely. “Isn’t it just a trick That Woman used to get Harry to do exactly what she just did?”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock, no paradoxes. Not at this time of night.”

“Irene told Harry this story because she shrewdly divined that the only way to induce Harry to part with the stone was to convince her that by doing so she would save a life. But that does not necessarily mean that the story is not true. This is what Harry tried to explain to you on the phone. You could not grasp it, however, because whenever Harry mentions her drinking days, anger floods your brain and shorts out all the synapses.”

John’s could not suppress a rather loud cry of protest. It was instantly muffled by the black-gloved hand that Sherlock clapped over his mouth.

“Please possess yourself in silence until I have explained everything to your satisfaction,” Sherlock whispered, his lips now touching John’s ear.

The hand didn’t move. John was pretty sure, from the way his nerves were tingling, that he didn’t want it to. He was also pretty sure that part of that tingle was fear.

“The key to it all is Ryder’s new designer drug,” Sherlock hissed. “It’s made from plants that she grew up with, since they’re grown at Kingfisher farms. It’s an opium and nightshade cocktail with a few herbal additions to enhance certain effects. It is, in fact, a new, one hundred per cent locally-grown organic version of your old friend twilight sleep.”

John made a muffled noise of incredulity.

“Irene Adler told Harry the drug was peculiarly suited to her business,” Sherlock murmured. “She is absolutely correct. Some patients, as you said, did indeed find twilight sleep a hallucinatory and harrowing experience. But for most, the main symptoms were a feeling of serenity, a sense of detachment from the material world, increased suggestibility, and of course total amnesia after the drug wore off.” Sherlock’s free hand stroked the back of John’s neck. “Increased suggestibility followed by total amnesia, John. Imagine what Irene Adler could do with that.”

A cold shiver started in John’s thighs and ran through the rest of his body.

“The objection you would raise, of course,” Sherlock’s voice sighed, as that hand lay lightly along the nape of his neck, “is that clients wouldn’t pay for experiences they won’t remember having. But for Irene Adler’s clientele, this is precisely what makes the pleasure so exquisite. Her clients are tired of power and want to surrender it. What more perfect surrender can there be than to commit to an experience of which you know you will have no conscious memory? Anything could be done to you and you could be made to do anything and as long as it left no permanent marks you’d be none the wiser. For the client who retains a sense of shame, both the drug itself and the promise of amnesia liberate him from all inhibition. Taking the drug in Irene Adler’s presence is in itself an eroticized act through which the client puts himself entirely in her power. When he wants to know what happened, he’ll have to beg her for the details. Perhaps she documents the experience, and lets the client watch his own antics afterward. Perhaps she lets it all remain a mystery. Perhaps she invents stories that are immensely more exciting than any real erotic encounter could possibly be. In any case, these kings of commerce and rulers of the realm live lives by day which are excruciatingly future-oriented. What bliss to surrender themselves wholly, body and brain, to pleasures that can be experienced _only_ in the present moment.”

John shuddered.

“Pure speculation, you say.”

John nodded.

“How could I possibly deduce this from the available evidence, you wonder.”

John nodded again, as the hand tightened over his mouth.

“You are forgetting the results of our autopsy.”

Sherlock’s body slid closer to John’s, ostensibly so that Sherlock could whisper from closer range. John did notice that Sherlock’s free hand seemed to have slid down to just below the small of John’s back.

“Jeanie told you how close her little brother was to those hens,” Sherlock breathed. “Close enough to feel some pain when they are slaughtered. Young George knows about Ryder’s concoction, and he humanely administers his big sister’s potion to each chicken just before it is slaughtered, so that the chickens—at least in his own mind--may experience a sense of serenity and a deep indifference to external events which neutralizes the pain and trauma of the execution. His mother allows him to do this because it actually improves the taste of the meat. This is, of course, illegal; but given that the Kingfishers are clearly supporting the family farm by dealing in raw opium, these smaller infractions must seem like child’s play. As indeed they are.”

The night seemed to be getting darker. There was still no movement in front of the windows, or any sign of an attempt at entry from the rear of the building. John found himself both hoping and fearing for someone, no matter how nefarious, to materialize before them and change the subject.

“This has perhaps not crossed your mind,” Sherlock whispered fiercely. “But a drug with these effects would come in very handy for plotting a complicated jewel heist. If you could secure access to someone involved in the shipment and administer this drug, you could extract the information you wanted and the victim wouldn’t remember talking to you. The drug is the link not just between Irene Adler and Ryder but between Ryder and the original thieves. That is why I believe Harry’s theory. Because of the number of things it explains.”

Sherlock finally dropped his hand. John took a deep breath.

After a few minutes of silence, John said, “Sherlock.”

“I am losing patience, John,” Sherlock whispered.

“What did Harry mean about…you know, she played me now I’m playing her but she knows that but she’ll let me do it?”

“Ambivalence,” Sherlock hissed back. “All her life Irene Adler has known what she wants and gone after it fearlessly. What she _really_ wants is impossible. Of the two possible outcomes, she hasn’t determined which is worse. She wants to win; she wants to lose. We are not really defeating her; we are helping her defeat herself.”

Ambivalence, John thought. That was what That Woman seemed to inspire in everyone she met. She lied and cheated and betrayed and it only made her more fascinating to the people she hooked. Sherlock had beaten her in the end; but that wasn’t because she hadn’t seduced him. The shock of betrayal had simply been painful enough to break the spell.

Temporarily.

Harry had never explained how she realized that the audacious sensualist who had lured her into the Cave of Love was, specifically, Irene Adler. Maybe Harry herself didn’t know how she knew. John did. There was something unique that emerged in Sherlock whenever he spoke about That Woman. It had risen to the surface when Sherlock started talking about that audacious sensualist and her theater of pleasure. John, thinking back, could recognize it. Harry must have recognized it too. She had known, without knowing, that the woman whose lair Sherlock had described in such fascinated detail had to be Irene Adler.

Sherlock naturally hadn’t told either of them that. Because some part of him was still infected by her. Case in point, that last unexpectedly one-sided conversation. Just breathing Irene Adler’s air did things to Sherlock that John wasn’t sure he liked.

John’s feelings about That Woman were not ambivalent. Plain old-fashioned rage and jealousy. That Woman still had exclusive access to some secret place in Sherlock’s heart. This despite the fact that her name was on the roster of the Cornelius Management Group. She had had Jim Moriarty on speed-dial. She had tricked Sherlock into making a colossal mistake that endangered national security and caused Mycroft’s masters to demand his death. She had been the first link in the chain that led to the Fall. And Sherlock still wasn’t over her.

John didn’t know what Sherlock wanted from Irene Adler—or what Harry, God help her, might be starting to want. All John knew was that he wished she had stayed dead.

Adrenaline shot through him. A second later he was aware of the iron grip of Sherlock’s hand on his wrist.

Sherlock always heard everything first. Footsteps. Someone was moving furtively about in the shadow of the wall. Someone tall, and narrow, wearing black Army-issue boots, dark trousers, and a black and white pinstripe shirt.

Ryder turned, looking up and down for anyone who might see her. Then she scrambled over the wall like a squirrel running up a tree, and dropped down on the other side.

Somewhere behind the wall, a door opened, then closed.  

Sherlock reached into his pocket and pulled out a squat black shiny object shaped like an egg.

“Harry,” Sherlock whispered.

 “Right here, Sherlock.”

“Ryder’s come in through the back. Any activity out front?”

“No.”

“Keep your eyes on the door and await further instructions.”

“I hear and obey.”

For two or three maddening minutes absolutely nothing happened. Wherever the two women were in the house, they were away from the windows visible from this vantage point. Sherlock tensed up more with every second. His fingers began to drum—very quietly—on the tin.

The egg buzzed.

“Ah!” Sherlock sighed. “Speak,” he said to the egg.

“Someone just came out through the front door. Long black coat, trousers, looks like a fedora and…all right, those have got to be Irene Adler’s boots.”

“I won’t ask how you know that, Harry,” Sherock murmured into the egg.

“Shut up, Sherlock. She’s headed east to Regent Street.”

 “Let her pass three cross-streets, then start driving after her. Keep a few cars between yourself and her. Don’t overtake her.”

“Well, all right, but…I’m not, uh, very good at driving in London, even under normal circumstances. She’s bound to notice.”

“Yes, Harry. She will notice that you’re following her and that is exactly what we want. Try your hardest _not_ to be seen and that will convince her that her diversion has worked.”

“Understood. Kirk out.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Kirk?” he inquired.

John sighed. “When we played _Star Trek_ , I always wanted to be Bones.”

John waited in silence for the taunt.

“What’s _Star Trek_?” Sherlock finally said.

John gaped at him. “ _Seriously_ , Sherlock?”

“Hssst!”

The rear door of the house opened and closed again. A few moments later, Ryder’s close-cropped head surmounted the wall. They heard her drop down into the shadow. Her feet pattered off down the laneway.

Sherlock slid down the drainpipe. John dangled himself awkwardly over the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground still more awkwardly. He had to sprint to catch Sherlock, who was following her at a distance, sticking close to the wall and staying in the shadow, and whispering furiously into the egg.

“Ryder’s heading west along the laneway. Let me know which direction Irene Adler turns on Regent Street.”

“She’s stopped on the corner…it looks like she’s trying to get a cab.”

“Get up there before she catches one. When she does get into it memorize the license number. Then keep three cars between you and do whatever that cab does for the next twenty minutes. After that, lose her at the first credible opportunity, and then contact us.”

A light flashed in Ryder’s hand as she pulled out a cell phone and consulted it. Whatever she saw, it made her break into a trot, and then a gallop. Sherlock quickened his pace to match hers.

This is where I came in, John thought, charging after him. That insane chase across London, trying to keep up, jumping from rooftop to rooftop with the blood pounding in his ears and his lungs about to burst. Without a thought in his head. Just a refrain pulsing somewhere below the threshold of consciousness, throbbing to the two-step beat of his heart: _Alive. Alive. Alive. Alive._

Hooked then, hooked now. Tied till the end of his mortal days to a man who was sometimes pure intellect and sometimes pure animal and sometimes--on a hunt like this--an otherworldly fusion of both.

Ryder turned onto a small diagonal side street, still running. John had no idea whether she had a destination in mind or whether she was trying to evade them or whether she was just running because it felt good.

“She hasn’t seen us,” Sherlock whispered, as if he’d heard John thinking. “She hasn’t looked back once. She’s completely consumed with the thought of what’s ahead of her. Not a thought for what might be behind her.”

Where the hell did Ryder train, John wondered, and why hadn’t she competed in the 2012 Olympics? She maintained her pace through more turnings and byways and back roads than John could keep track of. Finally a laneway opened out onto a street that bordered a park on the opposite side. Ryder ran straight into traffic, making for the trees.

“No,” Sherlock hissed, as John made to follow her. “The sound of horns would alert the quarry. To the south, quick march, till we can cross like law-abiding pedestrians.”

Once across the street and into the park, Sherlock sped into the darkness as if he’d been fired from a gun. Infused by some unholy mixture of panic, lust, and adrenaline, John got his exhausted limbs moving again. He ducked under limbs and wove around trunks and finally nearly slammed into a  palisade of metal railings over which Sherlock had just vaulted. Muttering darkly, John backed up, made the leap, and would probably have impaled himself if Sherlock hadn’t been there to haul him over onto the other side.

They were on a main road now. The street was full of slow-moving traffic and the sidewalks clogged with pedestriands. Sherlock’s head darted in fifty directions, while his feet beat out an erratic tattoo on the pavement. Then he gave a little cry of triumph. Ryder was only about twenty yards ahead of them, on the same side of the same street, waiting for the light to change. Sherlock hustled forward, then dropped into an easier pace one he had her in his sights. Once they’d found her, it was easy enough to blend into the crowd and keep track of Ryder’s helpfully distinctive crop of spiked black hair.

The egg buzzed. Sherlock took it out and put it to his mouth, covering it with one hand.

“We’re on Sloane Street now, Harry. Use John’s mobile, it’ll be less conspicuous.”

Sherlock thrust the egg into his pocket. John’s mobile rang. He picked it up.

“Harry?”

“I know Sherlock said twenty minutes but I’ve lost her. Fucking roundabouts.”

John handed the mobile to Sherlock.

“You will never live this down,” was the first thing John heard him say. “We’re heading south on Upper Sloane Street toward the square. Get down here and pick us up as fast as you can. Keep the call open. John will update you if our route changes.” Sherlock handed the mobile back to John.

Something in a shop window had evidently caught Ryder’s eye. She stopped, turned, and stood for a moment hesitating on the pavement. Sherlock and John ducked under the awning of a Boots and watched her stand there, undecided. Ryder raked a hand through her upstanding hair. Maybe it was John’s imagination that the hand seemed disappointed, as if grieving for the hat it could no longer touch.

Ryder went into the shop.

 “Damn,” Sherlock muttered. “She’s seen us after all. That’s a classic evasive maneuver. Duck into a shop and then slip out the back entrance, while your pursuer waits for you to emerge. We’ll split up—“

He stopped. They’d gone back to the sidewalk and Sherlock had found a good vantage point near a bus shelter on the kerb, from which they could look surreptitiously into the store Ryder had entered. PHILOMELA’S FLORALS was painted on the window in precious curlicued lettering. Behind the glass was an array of cut flowers, artfully arranged. And there was Ryder, simply standing at the counter, watching the attendant wrap up a bundle of fresh flowers in paper. The flowers were all the same—spikes of tiny purple star-shaped flowers, clustered around the thick green stems in what seemed, to John, like a vaguely suggestive shape.

“I don’t believe it,” Sherlock murmured.

“Now that’s impulsive,” John added.

 “Boys?” Harry’s voice buzzed from the mobile. “What’s going on?”

“Oh nothing,” John said. “Ryder’s just decided to take a moment in the middle of a high-stakes clandestine mission to pop into a florist’s for a bouquet, that’s all.”

“God,” Harry said. “The immaturity, it burns. Only in the first flower of your butchhood would you think you needed to bring a dozen long-stemmed red roses to a fucking hostage exchange.”

“Not even roses. They’re…kind of weird-looking…”

Sherlock snatched the mobile. “Hyacinths,” Sherlock hissed. “They’re hyacinths, Harry. Now let’s everyone just get back on task, shall we? Quickly!”

Sherlock nodded toward the storefront. Inside the shop, the assistant handed Ryder the flowers, wrapped in paper.

Sherlock pocketed the mobile and busied himself consulting the route map posted on the wall of the bus shelter. John stood just outside it, hands in his pockets, waiting in what he hoped was a convincingly bored manner, stealing a glance at the shop entrance out of the corner of his eye.

It was wasted effort. Ryder wasn’t even looking where she was going. Her face was bent over the bouquet as she left the shop, as she breathed in the fragrance. When she turned to begin waving for a cab, John could swear she was almost smiling.

“Oh no,” John groaned. His knees began throbbing in anticipation of another sprint across the rooftops.

Several cabs, all occupied and engaged, went slowly past her. John silently thanked God, for the first time in his life, for Saturday night traffic.

John was so focused on Ryder and her mounting frustration that he didn’t notice the cream-colored Honda civic pulling up to the kerb next to him until he heard the distinctive shriek caused by Harry’s idiosyncratic braking technique.

Sherlock tore the passenger side door open and leapt in. John dove into the back seat, sorting himself out as Sherlock began barking directions at Harry.

“Wait here until—there! She’s found one. Pull out as soon as the cab does and I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

“Buckle up, Sherlock,” Harry said.

“Harry, time is of the--”

Harry put the car in park.

“ _Seatbelt_ , Sherlock. NOW!”

John heard the buckle click. Harry threw the car into gear. They lurched out onto the road.

From the back seat John couldn’t really see Ryder’s cab. He could see Harry’s back and shoulders, every muscle in them tensed to the point of rupture. In the mirror her eyes looked possessed.

He remembered, suddenly, the last time he’d been in Harry’s car. It had been the day after Christmas, and in the short time between leaving Harry’s apartment and reaching the movie theater, they had managed to have a vicious fight about nothing in particular. He’d thought, then, that that was why Harry’s hands had gone all white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He was starting to think that maybe that he’d gotten that backwards.

They had reached the square. The car careened shuddering around the U curve. As Harry craned her neck toward her rearview mirror, John saw a raised, red streak across the nape of her neck. It was recent, and it was oozing.

“Harry, you have a welt on your neck caused by—“

“A fucking riding crop,” Harry snapped.

“Irene Adler did that to you?”

“Yes.”

“They’re sticking to the main street,” Sherlock observed. “Get through to Sloane Gardens, it runs parallel. It jogs right at the end and send you back onto Sloane. Wait till you see them go by and then go back onto Sloane and follow them.”

The left turn was so wrenching John could almost feel his internal organs jostling each other.

“Excellent,” Sherlock said. “Turn right at the—“

“I see it,” Harry bit off.

Another sickening lurch.

“Sherlock?” John called, as he braced himself. “Are you listening to this?”

“Harry’s injuries are quite superficial, John.”

“Injuries? There’s more than one?”

The car came to rest, idling as Harry waited to spring back onto the main street.

“Can we not talk about the welts right now?” Harry said, sharply. “The humiliation of being beaten is worse for me than the pain. Always has been. Ask John.”

Sherlock actually took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at Harry.

John’s old anger flared up, bursting out in speech.

“She doesn’t mean literally beaten, Sherlock,” John said. “Dad never—“

“Dad never laid a hand on us,” Harry spat, cutting him off. “God, I’m tired of that. The end of every conversation I ever tried to have with Mum. He never laid a hand on you.”

Sherlock’s hand clutched Harry’s shoulder. “That’s her cab, Harry. Go! Go!”  

A peal of tires as they shot back into Sloane Street, with Harry cursing under her breath.

“But it’s true!” John cried.

“So _what?_ ” Harry shouted, coming to a heartstopping halt at a red light. “He never laid a hand on us. He didn’t fucking have to!”

Anger filled the car until it seemed the windows were bulging outward with the pressure.

“Green light. Green light, Harry,” Sherlock shouted.

The car rocketed forward.

“You tell me, John,” Harry ranted on. “If Dad came back right now and said, I can either give you a couple of belts with this riding crop or I can send you to Coventry for a week, which would you choose?”

Sherlock wasn’t looking at John; but maybe he heard John’s breathing get faster and shallower.

“ _Focus_ , Harry,” Sherlock said, shaking Harry’s shoulder with one hand. “We’re one light behind them. They could turn and we wouldn’t even see it. Speed up and close the gap and if I hear another word from you about your childhood traumas—“

“Fine,” Harry said. “Silence. I’m used to it.”

Coventry. It had been an effort for John not to flinch every time the word came up during what would now have to be called the first Irene Adler escapade. He’d thought at the time that Sherlock never noticed. Maybe he hadn’t. During that whole caper Sherlock’s attention had been very much occupied elsewhere. Between That Woman and Mycroft and vengeance for Mrs. Hudson he’d barely noticed John was there unless some heavily armed wanker was threatening to summarily execute him.

The cab was hurtling in a straight shot southward on Sloane Street. John’s stomach was grateful; but it did not take long for Harry’s tight-lipped silence to become far more unbearable than her outburst.

“Don’t, Harry,” John said. “Don’t let’s do this. Please.”

There was a long, slow exhale from the driver’s seat.

“I’m sorry, John,” Harry finally said. “I said I would let go. I’m trying. It’s just hard.”

“Curious,” Sherlock said, as the car swung to the right. “I had predicted they were headed for the embankment. I wonder if—“

“Wait,” John said, staring at the stone edifices rushing by on the right. “I know where we are. That’s the Royal Hospital Chelsea.”

“Of course,” Sherlock breathed. “The Chelsea Physic Garden.”

“The what?” Harry said.

“Slow down, Harry. Get to Paradise Walk and then stop.”

“If I could walk to Paradise, do you think I’d be down here with you two?”

Sherlock practically growled at her. John himself felt a burst of affection. She was doing her best to be friends again, even though her knuckles were still white.

In fact, she saw the sign for Paradise Walk, and drew to a stop by the kerb. Ryder’s cab went by; but it too was slowing down.

“Don’t go far, Harry,” Sherlock said, letting the belt zip back into its holder. “We may need the car. Come along, John. This is it. This is the spot Ryder appointed for the exchange. Now remember,” he said, turning around in the seat to fix John with that electrifying stare. “Irene’s been motivated throughout by the not unreasonable assumption that our intervention might ignite this tinderbox and lead the captors to execute the hostage. Irene’s darker self may view that as a desirable outcome but mine does not. So do nothing to betray our presence until the hostage is safe.”

John nodded, and undid the seatbelt. He wished he had his revolver.

 “Turn off all the gadgets,” Sherlock said. “Until it’s time to strike, we must be dark as the night and silent as the wind.”

Harry suppressed a snort.

Sherlock slipped out to the pavement, pulling things out of his pockets and pressing tiny buttons on them.  John powered down his mobile. The look of anxiety on Harry’s face in the mirror made it harder to just walk away.

“Go on,” Harry said, with a thin smile. “Good luck, John. Be careful. Love always, no matter what.”

“Harry--“ John began, hopelessly.

“It’s all right,” Harry said. “You have your memories and I have mine. I’m glad yours are better. Go.”

“It’s not…” John struggled for the words. “It’s not that exactly…”

The rear door flew open. With a roar of frustration, Sherlock grabbed John and hauled him bodily out of the back seat, slamming the door with his hip.

The Honda pulled away from the kerb. Sherlock grabbed John by the wrist and darted across the street. Dragging him away from the tangled wood of his past, into the path laid out for them by Ryder, who had just paid off the cab and was now walking unusually slowly toward the gate of a magic garden, with a bundle of hyacinths cradled in one arm.

*             *             *

If it were only a normal working day, Lestrade thought, this would go so much faster. Knock on the front door, ask if you can take a look round, assess the property, make a decision and move on to the next. Skulking around in the dark was not really his forte—and it was especially chancy in this kind of neighborhood, where most of the trees were really saplings, and the houses and gardens and streets had been planned to achieve a kind of genteel monotony so unblemished and so bland that a stranger lurking in the shrubberies was bound to stand out as if he’d been painted red. Though it was a Saturday night, most of the houses were dark. It wouldn’t be peak tourist season for another few months. For Sale signs bristled up from many of the yards. The crash had taken the wind out of the sails of a lot of the second-home crowd.

With his cell off Lestrade had no way of knowing exactly how much time had passed since he left Molly. Maybe he should call it an hour. The killers had now had nearly twenty-four hours to flee the city; and despite his warnings to Molly, Lestrade thought that most likely that the place would be abandoned. Postponing the search till Monday might not make much practical difference; it would save a lot of procedural hassle; and in any case even after all the work of elimination it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. He’d sort of forgotten, when he was making his calculations, that he wouldn’t have a team searching with him.

Stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets, Lestrade stood in the shadow of a wisteria-covered trellis and glanced around. Those nearly identical mud-brown houses seemed to be drawing themselves into a ring around him, hunching their shoulders and glaring down at him from their shutterless blank square eyes.

Lestrade let himself feel it. That creepiness, the sense of menace. He allowed his eyes free rein across the crazy quilt of grass and driveways and garages and…one greenhouse. Only one greenhouse in the whole development, sticking out at the back of the one fully detached house that was all alone at the top of its little hill.

Carefully, Lestrade drifted along in the shadows until he reached the greenhouse. It seemed to have been knocked together by amateurs; there were chinks at the seams that had been filled with putty, and instead of glass the roof and sides were made of transparent corrugated plastic. They let the light through; but the corrugation baffled the eye, and it was impossible to know what was growing in that greenhouse without breaking into it.

Still. Peering through he could see a kind of watercolor blur of different hues; and blue-green seemed to be prominent.

The main house brooded behind it, dark and silent. All the windows Lestrade could see had been fitted with blackout shades. There was only one indication of life. Up on the second storey, he could see a tiny sliver of yellow light along the edge of one of the windows. As Lestrade watched it, it began to disappear. From the top down, it rolled itself up until it winked out.

Someone was in there, sealing the cracks. Someone was planning something in there that neither the neighbors, nor Google satellite view, nor a police patrol should be able to see.

Backup, Lestrade’s mind said. Never go into a situation like this without backup. Call someone, call Jones even, and wait for them to come and cover you.

Lestrade kept his eyes on the window. The panes rattled and shook. Something heavy had crashed into them. Then came a thumping noise loud enough to drift down to where Lestrade was standing.

The sound of a body hitting the floor.

Lestrade was off. Headed into the house, toward the darkness and the victim and the noise, one hand hunting for the gun that he was not, of course, carrying.

He attacked the door that led from to the back garden, thinking it would be the flimsiest. He was right; the cheap wood had rotted in a ring around the doorknob, and a few well-placed punches bashed the whole assembly right through to the other side. Lestrade stuck his hand into the hole and pulled the door open.

To his left was a door that led into the garage. It was open, and deserted; not even a car. On a workbench lying against the wall was an assortment of tools. Lestrade darted in, seized a crowbar, and slipped back into the so-called ‘great room’ and up the steps to the second storey.

He was right; the door of the room whose windows he’d been looking at was locked. Lestrade put his ear to the door. The only thing he could hear was a low moaning sound, probably made by a woman.

Lestrade applied the crowbar. The door burst open.

This was, evidently, the master suite. There was a king-sized bed in the middle of the room, spread with a white quilt. On top of this quilt lay the body of a woman. Her legs were splayed; her long brown cotton skirt revealed sturdy calves and thick ankles. Her feet were bare. Her brightly patterned peasant blouse was still heaving in time with the rise and fall of her chest. Her hands had been bound together with adhesive tape. Her long, curly hair, brown threaded with gray, was spread out against the white fabric. From the face, Lestrade would have put her somewhere in her fifties.

Crowbar in hand, Lestrade backed into the corner, keeping his eyes fixed on the door to the bathroom. Whoever had been using the roll of duct tape that now lay by the foot of the window must have gone in there.

The metal in his hand was somewhat reassuring. It could almost fool his reptile brain into believing he was armed. He walked slowly toward the bathroom door.

From behind it he heard a kind of squeaking that reminded him of hamsters. It couldn’t be hamsters. No. It wasn’t. It was… giggling. Half-stifled, high-pitched, very unpleasant giggling.

Lestrade kicked the door open. “Police! Don’t move!”

The giggler was standing on the toilet, one hand on the sill of the open window. It was a small window, but he was a small man. He was dark-haired, with a pale, broad face mocked by a pair of tiny spectacles. He greeted Lestrade’s entrance with a nasty little smile.

“Of course,” he said. “Since you wish it, and you are a guest in my house, I shall…as your American colleagues are so fond of saying… ‘freeze?’”

Lestrade tried to ignore the condescending tone and concentrate on placing the accent. Mediterranean, definitely. Not Greece, not Italy. Maybe North Africa.

“Put your hands in the air and come out quietly,” Lestrade said.

He lifted his hands; but the motion looked more like a summons than like surrender.

The insight came one second too late. The little man dropped one hand. And something dropped, in the same instant, on the back of Lestrade’s skull. It crunched like wood; but it fell like a hammer.

Lestrade dropped to the floor. The last thing he heard, before his eyes closed, was the sound of someone opening a fresh roll of duct tape.

*             *             *

Harry eased the car into the parking space and turned off the ignition. She sat there, breathing slowly, trying to peel her hands off the steering wheel.

She was fine with driving now. Just fine. Unless there were passengers in the car.

So many things she really shouldn’t have done tonight. Letting Sherlock talk her into tailing a suspect was certainly one of them. So was bringing up Coventry in front of Sherlock. Of course John hadn’t told him about it. John loved their father. Harry supposed somewhere deep inside she must love the bastard too, or she wouldn’t hate him so much.

Harry closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel.

“WELCOME TO THE WORKING WEEK—“

Fucking phone.

She struggled frantically to silence the horrible thing. Then she saw it was from Molly.

“Hello?” Harry said.

“Oh thank God.” Molly sounded terrible—breathy, and flustered, and in nearly the same state she’d found her in at the police station. “Harry, I’m—I’m afraid something’s happened to Greg.”

First names. Must have been some day.

“What makes you think that?”

“Well we’ve been tracing the Hyacinth Girl’s movements all day and he thought he knew the area where the crime scene might be and he was going to go look for it and he was supposed to be back in an hour and it’s been an hour and a half and he’s not back and I don’t know what to do and I don’t want the police after all that’s happened and Sherlock won’t answer his phone is he there or do you know where he is?”

“The Hyacinth Girl?” Harry repeated.

“You know—the victim—we found her in my hyacinths, we think they were special to her somehow—look it doesn’t matter, the point is we figured out she must have been poisoned somewhere on the Isle of Dogs near Mudchute Park and it was nightshade so the symptoms didn’t show up right away so she ran a really long time and that’s how she got to my garden and—“

Molly was still talking, but Harry couldn’t hear her. A thermonuclear bomb had just detonated somewhere in her cerebral cortex.

“Molly. Molly. Stop one moment. I have to ask you something. It will sound stupid but it’s very important.”

“All right I’m stopping.”

“Your victim…the Hyacinth Girl…was she a young woman with long, dark hair?”

“Yes,” Molly said. “But what has that got—“

“You say the cause of death was nightshade poisoning?”

“Well the tox screen’s not been done yet but the blue stains and the symptoms are classic—“

“You said she’d been tortured for weeks. How many?”

“I think four, that’s my estimate, give or take—“

“Christ!” Harry shouted, striking the steering wheel with the heels of both hands. “It’s the same case. It’s the _same fucking case!_ ”

“What?”

“I—holy mother of—this is horrible—what a sad fucking story—“

“Harry, please, for God’s sake make sense.”

“Right.” Harry slammed the car door and began walking as fast as she could toward the entrance to the Chelsea Physic Garden. “I’m on my way right now to find Sherlock and John.”

“Oh thank you,” Molly sighed. “We should have told him at the beginning only I still thought last night was this hideous mistake and now it’s all different and I don’t care who knows now and are you all right, Harry? Are you crying?”

Yes. She was crying. Harry stopped for a moment by the stone wall that separated the sidewalk from the garden, and tried to pull herself together.

“Sorry, Molly,” she said. “It’s just…the wasted effort alone would break your heart. A whole month of scheming and intrigue and plotting and counterplotting and…that poor _child_ is out there waiting for her true love with a bouquet of her favorite flowers and it’s just horrible. It really is.”

Behind her, Harry heard a scrabbling sound. Like a squirrel running up a tree, but louder.

She spun around, dropping her phone hand to her side. But there was nothing on the path, except a few fragments of masonry that had been dislodged from the wall.

Nothing for it but to keep going.

“What child?” Molly said, when Harry put the phone back to her ear. “Whose true love? What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, Molly,” Harry murmured into the phone, striding toward the garden gate as fast as she could. “We don’t have time for my story. Please tell me your story. Start at the beginning and give me the straight narrative and keep your voice down and I do hesitate to say this but please talk as fast as you can.”

*             *             *

Harry was right about the immaturity. Ryder had selected the Chelsea Physic Garden, presumably, because she thought of it as her turf. Within its walls were collected thousands of medicinal plants from all over the world. Who knew how many of them were growing now at Kingfisher Farms, or what potions they had gone into. Maybe she also thought it was smart to arrange the meet on the gravel courtyard surrounding the acid-eroded and lichen-spotted statue in the center. It was a relatively open space, and she could be sure of seeing them coming. But it was also exposed, and surrounded by flowering shrubs and trees that would provide an adversary or spy with plenty of cover. John and Sherlock had no difficulty slipping in among the bent boughs of a young tree and peering out at Ryder from between its flower-laden branches. The wind was rising. The trees seethed in it. The rustle of leaves crescendoed till it was a roar like the river’s own.

Ryder hugged her flowers closer to her chest with one arm. The other hand was in her pocket—a fist clenched tight at the end of a rigid arm. And inside those clenched fingers, John knew, was the blue carbuncle.

Sherlock’s fingers gripped John’s wrist like a vise. A few moments later, Ryder heard it. And then John finally heard it too. A pair of boots walking on gravel.

From the gloom beneath the trees, the figure emerged. It was tall and broad-shouldered, and it walked with the confidence of a man who knew that at least half the people in the room would be glad to see him coming. As he turned to look for Ryder, John caught sight of his profile, dark against the pale limestone of the statue. Classic features. Strong chin, lofty brow, magnificent hair swept back in perfect waves. A film star’s face, on a strong and graceful body. The kind of man John had always wanted to be in his own mind. A true ladykiller.

John stole a glance at the awkward, unkempt, wiry, goggle-eyed and bird-beaked figure crouching next to him. At the light in Sherlock’s eyes and the lips parted in anticipation and all the tiny ridiculous things that conspired in an instant to set John’s blood moving.

John resigned himself at that moment to a lifetime of never understanding _this thing._ Why this one face, why this one body. Why in a world of seven billion people did it become impossible to do without _one_ of them. Why in a world of tragedy does _one_ woman’s death snatch the heart from your body. How in the midst of crime and depravity and violence and greed does _one_ man years later lay a hand on your breast just above the empty place and make your heart, under his touch, grow again.

They had found each other. Ryder stood at one corner of the square gravel plot surrounding the statue. The ladykiller stood at the other. The wind dropped, so that their words floated out to John and Sherlock’s hiding place, clear and calm as ripples on a lake.

“Well then,” said the man, in the voice of a radio presenter. “Let’s have it.”

Ryder did not remove her hand from her pocket.

“What is this?” she demanded. “Where’s Sophia?”

The man spread his hands wide. “Couldn’t bring her. Circumstances didn’t permit.”

Ryder took a step back.

“This is not what we agreed on.”

“We _agreed_ on Saturday morning,” said the man. "You're the one who upset the arrangements."

"That is not my fault. Irene told you what happened."

"The point is, we couldn't bring her here at this hour," Latimer said. “Too much risk of exposure.”

Ryder’s voice, when she replied, was almost breaking.

“I will not surrender the stone to you until you release Sophia to me.”

“Of course not,” said the other man, genially. “No one with any sense would. Come with me, I’ll take you to her and we’ll sort it out there.”

“No,” Ryder said, clutching the flowers more tightly.

“It’s the only way,” said the man. “And we’d better be quick about it. You know the kind of thing Kemp gets up to if you leave him alone too long.”

Ryder was silent.

“Please,” said the man. “Trust me.”

“Why?” Ryder shouted. “Why should I trust you? What is any of this to you?”

“Nothing, I guess,” said the man. “Only I would like to see Sophia look happy again, just once, before I lose her forever.”

Something seemed to convulse Ryder’s body. Looked like it could have been the beginning of a sob, but it was crushed halfway through.

“Look, if Kemp decides he’s never getting that stone back, he’ll dispose of Sophia in the nastiest way he can think up. You don’t want that. I don’t want that.”

Ryder wavered. The hand in her pocket trembled. One of her feet moved forward, thinking about beginning her first step toward the man who stood on the gravel before her, looking so honest and clean-shaven and worthy of trust.

“Please,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

 _Don’t do it,_ John found himself thinking. _You can’t be this stupid. Don’t let him get you alone._

“No,” Ryder said, weakly. “I’m not going anywhere until I see her.”

A long, black pistol leapt out of the man’s pocket and came to rest at the end of his outstretched arm, the barrel pointing right between Ryder’s eyes.

“Then you can give it to me now,” he said. “Or I can shoot you dead, and then take it. I’d have done that already only I would hate to break Sophia’s heart.”

Ryder was visibly trembling. It hit John suddenly, how young she was, and how terrified. He itched to just leap out and beat the smugness off the man’s handsome face. The only thing keeping him still was the pressure of Sherlock’s hand around his wrist. He understood Sherlock’s touch now as if it were speech. _Not yet. They still have the hostage._

As if thoughts could be conducted by touch, a whole chain of Sherlockian observations rocketed through John’s mind. One: Despite the illusion of sylvan seclusion created by the garden, they were in the middle of a densely populated and well-policed part of the city. Two: That gun did not have a silencer. Three: Unless this man was an idiot or a psychopath, he would vastly prefer to do his business without executing someone, loudly, in public. Four: if he were given an opportunity to do that, he would take it. Five: Ryder did not know any of these things and could not be counted on to give him the opportunity.

She could not let go of it. John could see it. It was the only thing she had to bargain with and she could not give it up, not even to save her own life.

Ryder straightened up and jammed her other hand into her other pocket.

“We have to do something, Sherlock,” John whispered. “She’s going to get herself shot.”

“We have to think about the hostage, John.“

 “Either shoot me, or release Sophia,” Ryder said. “That’s the only way you’re getting the carbuncle.”

From the other side of the square, a woman’s voice rang out.

 “She’s already dead!”

Jesus Christ, that was Harry’s voice. John couldn’t see where she was; maybe the ladykiller couldn’t either.

“They killed her last night! She’s _already dead!”_

Ryder froze. The man kept the gun trained on her, but his eyes began searching the foliage for the source of the voice. Sherlock pulled the black glassy egg from his pocket, tested it once in his hand, and fired it toward a tree just behind the gunman. The egg exploded against the bark with a quite credible crack. The ladykiller spun around and emptied three chambers into the tree trunk. By the time he’d realized he was dueling with a tree, John and Sherlock were upon him.

They moved like two limbs of the same body. They knocked him to the ground. John stayed on top of him, grinding his face into the gravel. Sherlock stamped down on the man’s outstretched wrist, then leaned down to pick up the gun.

The gun disappeared. No; there it was, clutched in the gloved hands of a woman in black, who was now brandishing it in Sherlock’s face.

“I would hate to shatter one of nature’s masterpieces,” Irene Adler said. “But if you don’t step aside this instant, that is what I will do.”

 _Sherlock_ , John thought, _you mad bastard, don’t—_

He did. He drove right at her. Irene Adler did not, after all, pull the trigger. She swung the gun at Sherlock’s head with both hands. Sherlock grabbed her by the wrists, drove a knee into her stomach, and flipped her. She was up on her feet with the speed of a cat, still hanging on to the gun. John got into a crouch and sprang at her from behind. She twisted out of his grip and John fell to the ground. He looked up and saw her running. She had the gun in one hand, and she was hot on the heels of the ladykiller, who was charging for the garden gate, the carbuncle apparently entirely forgotten.

“After her, John,” Sherlock shouted, grabbing John by the collar and pulling him to his feet.

“Where’s Ryder?” John said, as they pelted up the path toward the outer wall. “And where’s Harry?”

Something heavy fell out of the branches of a tree, landing with a thud and a curse on top of one of the stone posts next to the gate.

“That would be Harry,” Sherlock panted. “As for Ryder, she melted into the darkness and it has been established that none of us are fast enough to catch her.”

Sherlock pushed the gate open. They ran through it. Harry jumped down from the post. All of them turned toward the sound of a commotion that had broken out on the opposite side of the street. The driver side door of a black SUV sporting a trailer hitch and a bicycle rack had just slammed shut.

A gunshot rang out. A bullet hole blossomed on the side of the SUV. Then another, a little closer to the driver side window.

The ignition sputtered. Rocketing across the street came a black-hatted, black-coated figure who could only be Irene Adler. She battered at the window with the gun. The van peeled away from the kerb. John felt his mouth fall open as he saw her throw herself at the departing SUV. It pulled into the street with a woman in black spread-eagled across the rear of the car, one boot planted on the bumper and one on the trailer hitch, both hands clinging to the bicycle rack.

“Holy mother of God,” Harry murmured.

“The car,” Sherlock gasped. “Harry. Where’s your car?”

Harry turned and ran. They followed her. Everyone piled into the car. Harry had it out and rumbling down the street before John had even closed the rear door.

“ _What_ the fuck was that?” John shouted. “And what the fuck is this?”

“I’ll say this,” Harry said, as the car caromed around the corner. “It’s a lot easier to keep track of a moving vehicle when Irene Adler’s riding it.”

“You nearly got yourself killed!” John shouted.

“Well I couldn’t just sit there and let him _shoot_ her!”

“I should have known it all along,” Sherlock cried bitterly. “Sophia. Ryder’s lover. She’s that corpse of Molly’s, isn’t she. Isn't she, Harry.”

“I’m not even going to ask—“

“I was in the room when you got the call from your mysterious ‘client.’ From the change in your tone of voice after the official greeting, obviously someone you know. You glanced at me when you promised, reluctantly, not to do something. Obviously someone I know. There are few people in London that both of us know and most of them were in the room last night when you were handing out your new business cards. Mrs. Hudson pitched hers in the trash and Lestrade left his on the mantel but Molly put hers very neatly in her wallet. Molly doesn’t want me to know that she went home with Lestrade last night and she mistakenly believes that I won’t know it if nobody tells me. So. What does Molly need a lawyer for on a Saturday morning? It’s not drugs, public drunkenness, or indecent exposure. The mind naturally gravitates toward the question of what exactly friend Lestrade perpetrated last night but you returned from your brush with Scotland Yard determined not to let the carbuncle go anywhere near the weekend team, citing your desire to hand it to someone who won’t arrest you just because you happened to find it. Obviously you had made the acquaintance of the infamous Athelney Jones, who thanks to incompetence in the administrative ranks is still working homicide. So. It’s Molly, and it’s a murder. And you weren’t going to say a word to me about it.”

“I promised her,” Harry said. “And even if I hadn’t, it would have been privileged. And I didn’t know we were all working the same case. Not until I got a call from Molly about ten minutes ago. Listen, Sherlock, Lestrade needs your--oh my God, he's trying to throw her."

They were speeding along the embankment now. Irene Adler was still clinging to the bicycle rack, though the SUV was swerving wildly.

“She won’t be thrown,” Sherlock murmured. “I saw her eyes. She really did love that woman. And if we don’t get to him first--”

Harry spun onto the shoulder and slammed the brakes. John saw that the black SUV had done the same. The driver’s side door was open, and its occupant had scrambled out of it down the slope toward the river. Black coat flapping, the avenging shadow sped after him.

They piled out of the car. Harry’s door was still hanging open when they heard the shot.

Sherlock sprang into the lead. John was nearly keeping pace, with poor Harry scrambling slowly and tentatively down the rocky slope.

The concrete underside of the bridge arched above them, vibrating in sympathy with the traffic. Here in its shadow, though, everything was oddly peaceful. Irene Adler had vanished. Sherlock had come to a stop, breathing heavily. The Thames and its currents whispered along the riverbank. Something was floating in the shallows, revolving slowly as the eddies around it rose and fell. Its clothes were sodden, and a violent red star had burst open in the middle of his once-magnificent face. It was a brand-new corpse, that had once been a man as handsome and as tall as any.

END CHAPTER IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose the Lestrade fans were a little startled to discover that he's impotent. But you figure any guy in Lestrade's position relative to Sherlock would have some performance issues, metaphorically or literally. And it means that when Molly starts in on what she thinks is going to be the encounter-ending speech about pity, he actually understands where she's coming from and can meet her there.


	5. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID--PART ONE

It was as hard to grasp it now as it had always been in Afghanistan. After the speed, the noise, the shots, the desperate rush to save everything _now now now_ before it all went to hell…then silence. From living to dying, from dying to dead, all in a matter of seconds. The sudden corpse, the mutilated face, the broken rocks leading down to the water’s edge, all recalled John to other final agonies in other stony places. Places where there was plenty of rock, but no water; where you were desperate for even the sound of water to remind you that rain would one day fall even in this desert, and wash the stain of your failure away.

Sherlock had, for once in his life, broken a sweat. He was staring at the corpse; his lips moved, but no sound escaped them. Red light licked along the side of his face, then faded, then dawned again. That, John thought, is from the lights of a police car, which would also be the source of the siren blaring loudly from the top of that slope.

Or two police cars, John thought, as another siren joined the first. Or, as the case may be, three.

The choir of sirens finally broke in on Sherlock’s reverie. His face turned toward the red light. John followed his gaze. There were now four cars parked along the edge of the slope. Uniformed officers were disembarking from all of them, guns drawn.

 “We can’t let them find us here,” Sherlock muttered. “It would mean hours of delay at a critical time. We can’t outrun them. Maybe we can hide. Or I could take you hostage again. Yes, let’s do—oh. Damn. No revolver.“

A beam of bright light burst out of the darkness, lighting them up and nearly blinding them.

“Sherlock,” John whispered. “Have sense. They have already found us.”

“Police!” shouted a voice from the top of the slope. “Hands in the air!”

John complied. Sherlock, rolling his eyes, did the same. The uniformed officers crept closer.

“Identify yourselves!”

“I’m Dr. John Watson!” John shouted, before Sherlock could act on that look in his eye. “This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes! We are unarmed!”

There was a silence. And then, from behind the light, a new voice spoke.

“Lucky for you, freak.”

A dark shadow floated across the blinding orb. As it grew closer, it resolved itself in to the distinctive silhouette of Sergeant Sally Donovan.

“If you _were_ armed,” Sergeant Donovan said, “I might think that you had something to do with the three bullets fired into that tree in Chelsea, or that one of you might have been the person that several terrified motorists reported seeing clinging to the back of an SUV, or that you might perhaps be the person who shot a man in the face and left him to float in the river.”

John turned to look over his shoulder. The uniformed officers were already moving toward the shallows, sweeping the corpse with their flashlights.

Sherlock had dropped his hands, and he hadn’t been shot yet, so John stuck his own hands into his pockets.

“Sergeant Donovan,” Sherlock said. “We were following the individual who shot him as part of an ongoing investigation which has reached a particularly critical point. I will cooperate fully with your investigation _when there is time to do so_ but right now you _must_ allow us to continue pursuing _our_ investigation. The longer you keep us here, the smaller chance any of us have of recovering the killer.”

“How do I know you’re not the killer?” Donovan said.

 “ _Really_ , Donovan?” Under the sarcasm, there was real anger in Sherlock’s voice. “With a murderer on the loose and Lestrade’s life hanging in the balance, you want to play another round of ‘Prove a Negative?’ I know you love the game, but the trouble with it is that _nobody ever wins._ ”

“Hang on,” John said. “What’s this about Lestrade’s life?”

“Don’t try to distract me,” Donovan snapped. “You are persons of interest in a murder case and you will not be going anywhere tonight.”

John’s last shred of self-restraint disintegrated.

“What does it take?” John shouted. “What does Sherlock have to do before you stop treating him like a demented serial killer? I mean demented, yes, obviously, but for God’s sake. Isn’t it _enough_ that you drove him up to the roof? Will you not be satisfied till you’ve put him in the morgue?”

He couldn’t see Donovan’s face very well. But he didn’t need tarot cards to know that what happened next would not be good.

In the silence, John heard footsteps behind him. Harry was staggering, slowly and painfully, into the circle of light. Even allowing for the floodlights, she was white as a sheet; and although she seemed to have eradicated all material traces of it, they could all detect the unmistakeable scent of vomit. While they’d been arguing with Donovan, evidently, Harry had been off on her own somewhere, being sick.

“John,” Harry said, leaning on his shoulder for support, “as your attorney, I advise you to say nothing more to Sergeant Donovan at this time.”

Donovan looked from Sherlock, to John, to Harry.

“I don’t believe it,” Donovan sighed. “How many times do I have to tell one of you Watsons to stay away from Sherlock Holmes?”

*             *             *             *

The side of his face pressed against something cold, hard, slick, and wet. All along the left side of his body, everything was cold and hard. His hands were pinioned in front of him by something sticky wrapped around his crossed wrists. The same sticky stuff was also binding his ankles together. Apart from that he was in nothing but his skin, which was wet through. Rain--very cold and very hard and very persistent rain--pelted down on his uncovered head, plastering his hair to his forehead and sending streams of cold water straight into his stinging eyes.

Lestrade took a breath, and choked on a mouthful of water.

He spat it out, shaking his head and banging it against something. His feet kicked out, splashing through water and then striking something hard. He was slumped in a pool of water about two feet deep that had built up inside the strange square walled enclosure in which he had been dumped. It was too small for him to lie flat in—maybe three feet by three feet square. Lestrade’s head and one shoulder pressed against a tiled wall while his hips and feet pressed against another tiled wall opposite.

His eyes finally focused. It was very dark; but he could at least see that he was staring at a pane of thick, textured glass, which was streaming with rain. Rain that was falling, somehow, _inside_.

Shower, Greg. Get a grip. You are at the bottom of a tiny shower cubicle and the shower is on full blast and the drain is blocked and the water is rising and you had better sit up before it goes over your head for good and all.

Had he passed out in Molly’s shower? Was he just coming to now? Had the whole day been a dream?

Let’s be sensible here, Greg. We all have hidden depths; but somehow I don’t see Molly Hooper reacting to that situation by binding you with duct tape, turning off the lights, blocking off the drain, then running the shower and leaving you in there to drown. I really don’t.

It came to him slowly that the back of his head was throbbing because it had been hit by a large blunt object wielded by someone who was certainly not Molly Hooper. His throat hurt and for some reason his sinuses were killing him. He was was trapped in the tiny shower cubicle that had been built into the tiny bathroom in which he had surprised that strange little giggling man. That was much more likely. Though why the strange little man had elected to try to shower Lestrade to death instead of, for instance, shooting him in the head was a harder question to answer.

Well, no matter. Step one was to get out of this humiliating predicament before someone came in to finish him off or, even worse, to rescue him. The absolutely last fucking thing he needed was for Molly to see him like this. Or, God forbid, Sherlock.

Now his brain was back on line it shouldn’t be hard. His assailants must have banked on his remaining unconscious long enough to drown in a few inches of water. Thank God he had a thick skull.

Getting upright was a bit of a challenge. Once that was achieved, he put his shoulder to the glass door of the cubicle.

There was a clang, and a sound like the tearing of cloth. The door did not budge.

Something had been propped against the door from outside. And, Lestrade realized, the seam between the lower edge of the door and the molded plastic basin that formed the bottom of the shower stall had been sealed off on the outside with several layers of duct tape. So had the vertical seams between the edges of the door and the tiled walls of the cubicle.

That was why the water was still rising inside the stall, even though it had long passed the top of the molded plastic basin that formed the floor of the cubicle. The duct tape and whatever was propped up and holding the shower door closed had turned this cold little box into the kind of death cage that Houdini used to escape from.

Cold spray still burst with the force of a tropical rainstorm from the perforated metal disc above him. Fantastic water pressure, Lestrade thought; nothing like the anemic trickling he was used to. A real cloudburst. Wonder how they managed it.

Stop wondering, Greg. It’s past time to start taking this seriously.

The pool of water had already risen above his knees and was working its way up his thighs. Lestrade turned, bellied up to the tiled wall, and fumbled for the taps to shut the thing off.

His bound hands felt their way along the tile. His fingers closed over the square ends of the metal rods to which the hot and cold taps had once been attached.

The taps had been removed. Deliberately.

Lestrade scrabbled at the rods; but underwater, without pliers or something else that could grip the end of the rods, there was no way to turn the water off. It was up to his waist now. And it was fucking cold.

Drain. Unblock the drain.

Lestrade slid one foot along the floor, looking for the drain. The other foot, which he’d forgotten was attached to it, came with. Lestrade slipped and splashed to the floor. The water closed over his head.

He fought a nearly overpowering urge to open his mouth and inhale. He braced his feet against the door and slowly pushed his hips and back inch by inch up the wall until his head broke free.

The rain kept falling, torrentially as ever. He had to keep spitting out water that was trickling into his mouth. _Jesus Christ_ , he thought, gasping for air. _Killed by plumbing. If Sherlock ever hears about this he will die laughing._

With tiny, careful movements, he finally got his feet over the central spot where the drain must be. A square metal plate had been placed over the drain and screwed down at the corners.

Bugger.

All right. The cubicle door never goes all the way to the ceiling. If I just…

Oh. This one does. And the top edge is duct-taped to the molding.

Right.

Think.

If you can’t let yourself out, then let the water out.

Glass too thick, you’ll never break it. Door propped shut and taped on the outside. Metal plate not coming up unless you can get a power drill in there which would electrocute you anyway.

Hopeless.

With the water now splashing about his shoulders, Lestrade glared up at the goosenecked chrome-plated fixture from which his doom was gushing. From the base of its metal neck dangled a metal hook holding up one of those wire racks people used to store their toiletries. It was empty, of course. But the rack itself…

Lestrade took a deep breath.

Dropping to the floor, letting the water close over him, he groped with his bound hands for the tape wrapped around his ankles. His fingers found the edge. He picked at it frantically. Lungs bursting, he managed to peel off the first two layers.

He surfaced for breath, kicking one leg to loosen the tape.

Down once more. This time it came away easier. By the time he had to resurface, he’d loosened the coil enough that he could kick one foot free of it.

Straddling the edge of the plastic basin, reaching up awkwardly with his bound hands, he grabbed the rack. With a few desperate grunts he jolted the hook off the neck of the showerhead. The rack flew into the air, then hit the surface of the water and sank.

One more dive. A frantic scrabble for the rack. Back up on his feet.

As long as he was braced on the ledge formed by the edges of the basin, he at least had his head clear, though the water was lapping at the nape of his neck. His teeth were chattering. He’d better get this done before his muscles could no longer do anything except shudder.

The one seam that could not be reinforced from outside was the seam connecting the molded plastic basin to the tiled walls that rose around it. That was only sealed by a line of white caulking.

The rack had been coated with vinyl, but it had started to come away in patches. The metal hook from which it hung was bare. The exposed metal at the end of the hook was sharp enough. 

One big breath, Greg. Come on.

Down into the numbing cold again, to scrape with his makeshift tool at the caulking.

It was coming away. It was coming away. Thank God for mildew and shoddy construction and water pressure, it was actually coming away.

Two more breaths, two more attempts. The white line was breaking up. Bits of caulk floated in the water.

Back up. He had to tilt his head now to even get a breath of air. This would be his last attempt.

The edge of the plastic basin began to separate from the wall. Lestrade jammed the hook into the gap and pulled. The water did the rest.

The plastic warped and buckled as water poured into the gap. The duct tape at the bottom of the shower door pulled away as the plastic form beneath it twisted. Water gushed through the opening.

Inside the shower cubicle, the water level was dropping. Lestrade could stand on the bottom now with his head free. He shook the hair out of his eyes and began to laugh.

Bracing his hips against the rear wall, he kicked the shower door as hard as he could.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Crunch.

Whatever it was remained propped against the door. But it had given just a bit. Another good kick ripped the duct tape loose.

Water burst out through the broken seams. The pressure knocked the door back, dislodging the wooden chair that had been wedged between it and the base of the wash basin opposite.

A cold tide rolled through the half-open door, sweeping Lestrade along with it. He fetched up against the opposite wall, banging his poor skull yet again.

All right, Greg, he thought, shaking his head as he sat up. You’re down, but not out.

He pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. Water was still pouring across the tiled floor. He sloshed through six inches of it toward the medicine chest.

Lestrade glanced up into the mirror.

What a sight. In the dim light, with his glistening pallid skin, streaming eyes, blue lips, and wet hair, he looked like a drowned man walking. I’m too old for this, he told himself. Too old for adventure, too old for defying death, way too old for romance.

You lived, didn’t you?

“Great,” Lestrade said out loud. “Now my head has _two_ voices.”

You busted out of that crazy deathtrap. You found the crime scene. You got the girl.

Something seemed to be unfurling inside his chest, lifting his heart. There was life in the old boy yet.

Lestrade pulled open the medicine cabinet. Since it was his lucky day, maybe there’d be something in it that would cut this infernal tape.

*             *             *

John panted up the slope toward the greenhouse. Sherlock was already there, leaning his head against it, cupping his hands around his eyes and trying to see in.

“No good,” Sherlock said, as John finally reached it. “You can’t see through the plastic and there's nothing around here we could use to break it.”

“Then let’s get inside,” John muttered, tugging Sherlock toward the door that led from the garden into the house. “Before the neighbors call the police.”

“Exactly what we need,” Sherlock said. “Once we get the miscreants under control we could do with a few police. And since we’re burglars not murderers, we won’t draw either Donovan or Jones.”

The door was already hanging open. Sherlock paused for just a second over the splintered wood where the doorknob had once been.

“We’re on the right track,” he whispered. “This is exactly how Lestrade picks a lock.”

John could see merit in his approach. Not elegant, but quick.

“I knew it,” Sherlock murmured, as he opened the door. “This is the only neighborhood that fit all of his criteria and the only place with a greenhouse. And the windows on the bottom level are boarded up. He found them all right.”

The door led to a very small hallway which led up to the front entrance. On the right side, near the door they’d come in, was a door leading, probably, to the lower level. It was closed. To their immediate left was the door into the garage. It was open.

John and Sherlock darted through the open door.

“Empty,” John said. Apart from a workbench, some tools, and various bits of detritus piled along the sides and in the corners, there was nothing.

Sherlock threw himself to the garage floor. He began crawling around, sniffing at all the discolorations on the glazed cement surface.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock sat back on his heels with a snarl of disgust.

“What is it?” John said.

“Oil deposits,” Sherlock answered, flinging a hand at a round dark blot on the opposite side of the garage. “That SUV was always parked on this side. Well, we know where the SUV is now. On the other was a different kind of vehicle which was infrequently moved and used a grade of motor oil designed for a smaller engine…”

He stood up, turning rapidly as his eyes catalogued the space. He let out an angry hiss of frustration.

“Too late! _Damn_ it!”

“What do you—“

“That SUV had a boat trailer hitch and a bicycle rack,” Sherlock said, pointing to a tarpaulin huddled up in one corner and an empty bicycle rack mounted on the far wall. “No boat, no bicycles. Our birds are flown and the nest is empty. Thanks very much, Sergeant Donovan.”

Sherlock thrust his hands into his coat pockets and spun around, turning his back to John.

It was the hunched curve of Sherlock’s shoulders, the tension in the back of his neck, the way his hands were distending the pockets of the coat, that finally told John what had happened. By “too late,” Sherlock didn’t mean too late to catch the perpetrators. He meant too late to save Lestrade. Because of course if Lestrade had in fact found them, they wouldn’t have gone without finishing him off.

John could see anger and pain rising from Sherlock’s shoulders like steam. He himself felt empty. That might change when they actually found Greg’s body. But, as he knew from experience, it might not. The emptiness might go on. It might go on for months.

Into the despondent silence crept sound of running water. It seemed very far away.  

Then, also from a distance, a cry of pain.

“That’s him!” John shouted.

Sherlock grabbed John’s arm, waving for silence with his other hand. He flew to the workbench and picked up an axe. John grabbed a crowbar from its hook. Motioning John to follow, Sherlock raced out the door to the house.

All the way through the empty living area and up the staircase Sherlock moved as if on air. Lightfooted, swift, a bird in flight.  

At the top of the stairs they stopped. Water rippled toward them, a thin transparent sheet flowing over an already saturated carpet. It was pouring from a doorway at the end of the hall. Their feet plashed across it, sending out tiny wakes with every step they took.

The door was nearly hanging off its hinges. Someone had taken a crowbar to it in haste.

Sherlock and John eased themselves in, each on one side of the doorknob.

The carpet was soaked. Waves pulsed across it, emanating from a gap between the bathroom door and the floor beneath. Inside what was obviously a bathroom, water was still gushing at full blast.

John looked to Sherlock to see what he was making of this.

Sherlock was staring at the bathroom door. Something on the other side was kicking it.

Axe and crowbar in hand, side by side, they stalked toward the door.

With a mighty crunch, the door gave. It banged against the other side of the wall. Through the opening leapt a naked, dripping, screaming man, brandishing a long metal blade in one bloody hand.

John’s heart stopped cold. The naked man also froze, as if in shock.

“Now this,” Sherlock said, as he let his axe hand drop, “I had not anticipated.”

“My God, Greg,” John said, as his brain finally made sense of the image confronting it. “What on earth?”

 “This isn’t what it looks like,” Lestrade forced out, through chattering teeth.

“Isn’t it?” John said, bewildered. “Because I have no idea what this looks like, actually.”

Lestrade gestured with the straight razor. “I was trying to cut the tape on my wrists, see, and I nicked something…”

The sight of a treatable injury jolted John’s brain back into working order.

“Kit, Sherlock,” John said.

Sherlock rummaged in one of the inside pockets of that coat and pulled out a black leather case that zipped up around the edges. He tossed it to John, who went to Lestrade and took him by the non-bleeding wrist.

“Here, sit on the bed,” he said. “I’ll take care of that.”

John got the bandages and gauze out of the first-aid kit. “Sherlock, find him a blanket.”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, slipping out. “Since he’s obviously in shock.”

“I don’t need—“ Lestrade began.

“You do need,” John said. “You are on the verge of hypothermia. Whatever did they _do_ to you?”

Sherlock returned, flinging a plaid woolen blanket at Lestrade’s head. Without further remark, he sloshed through the still-running river into the bathroom.

John finished dressing Lestrade’s wrist. It was a rather long cut, but narrow and superficial. He sponged the bloodied water off Lestrade’s forearm and then began wrapping the blanket around Lestrade’s torso.

 “Important to warm up the core first,” John said.

Lestrade turned his head away with an annoyed snort.

“My God, your head,” John exclaimed. “They hit you with something hideous.”

The sound of rushing water finally died away. Sherlock emerged from the bathroom and walked casually around to have a look at the dent in Lestrade’s skull.

“A baseball bat,” Sherlock observed. “The end would have been hollowed out and filled with lead. The venerable ‘bludgeon’ has fallen out of fashion in today’s criminal underworld but our killers’ sensibilities were evidently formed somewhere in the era of early silent cinema, judging by the ingenious way in which they transformed an ordinary shower stall into something straight out of the Perils of Pauline.”

“Baseball?” Lestrade echoed. “Where in London would you even buy a baseball bat? More to the point, why?”

Sherlock glanced back toward the bathroom. “We’re going to find an American at the bottom of this, Lestrade. Only an American could conceive of the shower as a method of execution. Nobody brought up in England would ever imagine you could achieve the necessary water pressure.”

John crouched in front of Lestrade, peering into his eyes. “Keep your head still, Greg, I want a good look at your pupils.”

“I don’t have a concussion, John,” Lestrade snapped.

“You’re as bad as Sherlock. This is your brain at stake here.”

“Don’t worry about Lestrade’s brain, John, there are millions like it all over the globe.”

Sherlock threw himself into an armchair, pulling his feet up out of the wet.

“I suppose,” Sherlock said, grudgingly, “that we should let Sergeant Donovan know we’ve found him.”

“No!” Lestrade snapped. “Nobody is contacting Donovan until I have found some fucking trousers!”

“Fair enough,” Sherlock said. Sherlock pulled John’s mobile out of the pocket of his coat. John decided not to waste time worrying about when Sherlock had abstracted it.

“I’ll just fire a text off to Molly, shall I,” Sherlock said. “May as well CC Harry. ‘Found…Lestrade…naked and unashamed…’”

“You bastard,” Lestrade shouted.

 “…at 115A Friar’s Mead, doing as well as can be expected, don’t tell…Donovan…till… we…find…him… some…clothes.’”

Lestrade groaned. John packed up the kit. A little color was coming back into Lestrade’s face now, and his lips were less blue.

“There’s no cause for alarm, Lestrade,” Sherlock observed. “Under the conditions currently prevailing, I doubt Harry will feel inclined to volunteer any information of any kind to Sergeant Donovan.”

“Conditions currently prevailing,” Lestrade said. He sneezed violently, then wiped his running nose with the blanket. “Meaning what exactly?”

“We were chasing a member of this same gang, and there was…a bit of a murder,” John said. “Donovan arrived on the scene. Harry was negotiating with her, in her capacity as our attorney…”

Lestrade broke in.

“And you two skived off, leaving Harry to deal with a rampaging Sally Donovan.”

John closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, with a sigh. “Basically.”

“If Donovan doesn’t skin you for this, Harry will,” Lestrade said.

“You will be perhaps relieved to know, Lestrade,” Sherlock broke in, “that the Douche of Death was not constructed for you personally. That plate was screwed into the floor several days ago. They can’t have been expecting you. Either they were in the habit of playing this delightful near-drowning game with their now-deceased hostage, or they were preparing their death chamber for a different—“

“The woman,” Lestrade cried.

“Irene Adler?” John said, alarmed.

“Not _The_ Woman,” Lestrade said. “ _A_ woman—the woman who--when I came up here, there was a woman lying on this bed. She’d been drugged. I heard that little bastard giggling in the bathroom, and I went in to investigate—“

“Harry was wrong after all,” John said, as his stomach lurched. “The hostage is still alive—or she was when--”

“Quick,” Sherlock said. “Describe the woman you saw.”

“Heavyset…dressed like a gypsy fortune teller…she had long, dark hair starting to go grey…maybe in her 50s…”

Sherlock sprang to his feet, snatching up the crowbar.

“They had another captive,” Sherlock shouted, spattering water left and right as he ran for the door. “One Ryder and Irene Adler didn’t know about. Quick! If she’s still in this house she’s being executed as we speak!”

John grabbed his kit in one hand and the axe in the other and ran. Clutching his blanket, Lestrade hobbled over the sodden carpet after them.

Doors opening, doors banging closed. Two other bedrooms on this story, neither occupied, both with rifled drawers and empty wardrobes suggesting that someone had recently packed for a long journey in a hurry. Lestrade snatched up some underpants and a pair of black trousers on the fly. He struggled into them while John and Sherlock ran for the stairs.

Down one flight into the living area. Nobody there.

“Lower level,” Sherlock said, his eyes darting around the room. “Come on!”

They found their way back to the door they’d entered. Opposite the garage door was another door leading to the house's lower level. It was covered in wallpaper that matched the pattern in the hallway.

Sherlock twisted the knob. He backed up and threw his shoulder against the door.

There was a strange metallic clang.

“That doesn’t sound promising,” John said.

Sherlock rapped his knuckles against the door. “Wood veneer over a steel door. And that doorknob is a dummy.”

Sherlock took the crowbar and set himself to prying loose the brass plate from which the dummy doorknob projected. Lestrade finally caught up to them. He had the blanket clutched around his shoulders and had squeezed himself into a pair of very tight, too-short trousers.

“Why were _you_ chasing these bastards?” Lestrade demanded.

“Well, you know that case we called you about this morning…”

John paused, reflected a moment, then shook his head and started over.

“No. I can’t even. The main thing is, Molly got worried and called Harry and Harry told us about your case which it just so happens is also our case.”

“Molly told us what you’d done so far,” Sherlock said. “I deduced the rest. You should work with Molly more often, Lestrade. She seems to enhance your intelligence.”

“I hope I will,” Lestrade said, a little defiantly.

“Aha!” Sherlock cried.

The plate, knob and all, shot free of the door, striking the opposite wall and falling to the floor.

Underneath the plate was a keypad and a display screen.

“Damn,” Sherlock said.

He tapped out a string of numbers, hit the enter button, and gave the door a shove. It did not budge.

“Were those Irene Adler’s measurements?” John demanded.

“It was worth a try,” Sherlock muttered.

He crouched over the keypad, talking to himself.

“One ladykiller, one psychopath, and one other person must have been present to wield the life-preserver. Two of them at least knew Ryder as well as Sophia and probably Irene Adler too but…”

“Sherlock, you’ll never guess it. You don’t have enough data,” John said.

“ _Do not_ interrupt!” Sherlock shouted. “Don’t talk, don’t _think,_ don’t even look at me.”

Sherlock returned to his twitchy-fingered mumbling.

“For Christ’s sake,” Lestrade said, picking up the crowbar. “Come with me, John.”

Lestrade passed Sherlock, still trying to guess the code, and went out into the garden. The lowest story was half-sunk below ground level. He and John half-slid down the grass slope to reach the plywood that had been nailed over it.

“Give me the axe.”

John handed it over and scooted back. Lestrade buried the axe head in the plywood.

Lestarde gave out a little shout of joy as the wood cracked. He hacked away at it like a madman, littering the ground around him with shattered glass and long splintered daggers of wood. John took the crowbar and pried off anything he could get to without putting himself in the path of the axe, which was helping Lestrade toward a truly epic catharsis.

John pried off the last triangle of plywood. “You’re the police, Greg. Let me do the burgling.”

“Why not,” Lestrade said. “You’re dressed for it.”

John threw himself forward.

It was not a graceful entry; but at least he didn’t land on his head. He had fallen into what was apparently the kitchen. Inconvenient, he thought, putting the kitchen behind a steel door with a keypad. It was a nice kitchen, too; big gleaming Sub-Zero fridge, stainless steel sink, a load of flexible plastic tubing piled up on the counter next to it, along with a juicer and a beaker and several pipettes and a rack for the beaker that fit over one of the gas burners on the stove and test tubes and titration equipment and a centrifuge and several empty syringes and this was not really a kitchen, was it.

He looked into the sink. The weak artificial light coming in through the open window caught the jagged edges of pieces of broken glass. They weren’t from the window. The pieces were bigger, thicker, and curved. The remains of a glass bowl that had shattered.

John turned away from the broken bowl and the jumble of equipment, breathing hard.

There was a doorway near the fridge that communicated to what must be a dining-room beyond. A sheet of plywood had been converted into a makeshift door and reinforced with two-by-fours. It had no doorknob or lock; it was kept in place by a massive wooden beam placed crosswise through two hollow rectangles constructed out of two-by-fours and bolted into the struts behind the walls on either side of the door.

It should have been easy enough to open; but John found that pushing the beam out made all the muscles in his arms burn. As he pulled the door open he felt distinctly light-headed.

The room beyond the door held no furniture at all. The window blinds had been sealed to the edges of the window openings with duct tape. A ruddy glow emanated from a small portable charcoal grill that burned in one corner of the room. Red light picked out the only two other objects in the room: a bedpan, and a roll of duck tape.

On the tiled floor, near the grill, lay the body of a heavyset woman with long, dark, greying, curly hair. She was in fact dressed a little like a fortuneteller. She was writhing from side to side and moaning. Her eyes fluttered but wouldn’t open. She was, improbably for both her age and the circumstances, rosy-cheeked and red-lipped.

John rushed toward the woman on the floor. Bending over made him so dizzy he almost fell on top of her. Must be because it was so hot. So bloody hot, and she was in the hottest part of the room, right next to the grill, which for some insane reason was full of hot coals…

A charcoal grill. Indoors. In a room whose windows were closed and sealed off.

With his head swimming, John grabbed the woman by the arms and hauled her up. Draping her arms over his shoulders he staggered toward the doorway, then finally collapsed onto the floor with her on top of him. He slid out from underneath. With the speed of panic, John flew to the counter, scrambled up to the window, and stuck his head into the fresh air.

Lestrade was there, watching him. “What’s going—“

“The windows,” John gasped. “Break them. Break them all. Cut the shades out too. Here and in the dining room. Quickly.”

Lestrade grabbed the axe and disappeared. John took a few deep breaths, and dove back into the room.

Even with the window open, the atmosphere was nearly unbreathable. That thing must have been going for some time. How he was going to get her through the window John couldn’t quite imagine. His mind was not clear. Not clear at all.

A beep, a clang at the other side of the room, and a gust of clean air. Sherlock had finally got the door open.

“Sherlock!” John shouted. “Help me get her out! It’s carbon monoxide!”

He heard Sherlock draw in a deep breath. Then Sherlock was there, behind the woman’s head, grabbing her shoulders. John put his arms around her knees and together they lurched toward the door.

After what seemed like a million years, the three of them burst through the door into the garden. They dragged the woman up the grassy slope, then collapsed.

While John knelt over the woman, Sherlock ran off toward the house again.

“Sherlock, don’t go back in there!”

Wasted breath. He disappeared through the door. A moment later, a set of red-hot coals came flying through one of the windows that Lestrade had just split open, scattering themselves on the grass. Lestrade jumped back with an oath.

Sherlock’s figure appeared in the doorway. With a sigh of relief, John turned back to the woman lying on the ground. Her long hair had fallen into her face. He brushed it aside and made sure her airway was clear. She was breathing. The oxygen would get into her blood sooner or later, but there was no telling how long she had been half-conscious or what kind of damage had been done.

John felt for his mobile. It was of course with Sherlock.

Just as he was turning to call out to Sherlock to ring for an ambulance, the woman’s left hand shot up and took John by the throat.

John let out a strangled shout of surprise. The woman’s eyes were open, though the expression in them did not seem quite sane; and her grip was strong. Unusually strong. Asphyxiatingly strong.

It took John a moment to come to terms with the fact that he had to either hit his patient or allow himself to be strangled.

He struck out at her arm. The blow hit without much force; but her grip relaxed anyway. She let her hand drop, taking in a long and shuddering breath. Her eyes began to seem a little more human.

“Ah, thank the gods.” Her voice was low, with a strongly marked but not unmusical Greek accent. “Dr. Watson. I am sorry. I thought for a moment you were that little giggling maniac. I had lost hope that help would ever come. When I see that boy again I will give him a piece of my mind. He takes his own sweet time, eh?”

She was fully conscious and forming mostly complete sentences in what was clearly a second language. That boded well for her brain function, even if what she was saying did not make a lot of sense.

Judging it safe at least for the moment to turn his back on her, John looked around for Sherlock. He was climbing the hill toward them already.

“Sherlock!” John shouted. “Call an ambulance!”

The woman sat up and brushed her hair behind her shoulders. Her face had lost that uncanny rosy tone, and her face lit up with something John could only identify as joy.

“Sherlock!” cried the woman, extending her arms.

Sherlock froze with the phone halfway to his ear. John watched Sherlock’s mouth fall open, his eyes widen, and his face go pale.

“Marie,” Sherlock finally stammered, in the voice of a bewildered child. “What…how…”

Astonished, John watched Marie rise to her feet and totter toward him. Sherlock snapped out of his apparent catatonia, took a step forward, and nearly fell into her embrace.

Lestrade, axe in hand and as shirtless as ever, came bustling up the hill. He stopped a few paces away, as gobsmacked as John was by the sight of Sherlock Holmes actually holding another person. Tightly.

Marie, since that appeared to be her name, finally let go her hold. Sherlock drew back, looking at her as if trying to memorize her face. Marie stroked his hair with one hand. Sherlock let her do it once, then shook off her touch with a suppressed snarl of annoyance. Marie let out a big, hearty laugh which greatly reassured John as to the probable oxygen content of her blood.

“You two know each other,” Lestrade said, in disbelief.

Sherlock cleared his throat and tried to return to his usual demeanor.

“John,” he said, rather stiffly. “Detective Inspector Lestrade, this is Marie Melas. She’s an old family friend.”

Marie let out another laugh, and turned to Lestrade. “Family friend. That is what he thinks is the polite way to put it. That is Sherlock all over. So sensitive, so considerate.”

Lestrade just barely suppressed a bark of ironic laughter. John sympathized in silence.

A bright red blush mottled Sherlock’s cheekbones. He said, as if the words choked him, “Marie was our nanny.”

“Come come come.” Marie reached out to give Sherlock a playful pinch on the cheek. “These are your friends, they are my knights in shining lack of armor,” she said, glancing with frank appreciation at Lestrade’s bare chest. “There is no need for euphemism. I am, what is the correct way to put it, a discarded mistress of their father’s. Though it is true that I was also the boys’ nanny. When you at last come to write Sherlock’s biography, Dr. Watson, you will know by then that he has his mother’s brains and his father’s looks but please do not omit to mention that his nappies were changed by the wisest woman in Europe.”

Despite all the horrors through which they had all so lately come, John could not help laughing. Lestrade at least kept it down to a smirk. Then Lestrade took in a sudden breath and said, “Wait. I’ve seen you somewhere before. I know I’ve seen you.”

Marie drew herself up, waving a hand slowly through the air before her like a magician making a pass. “Yes, Detective Inspector. You HAVE seen me before. I am known to most inhabitants of this mundane world as Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante.”

“You’re on the telly,” Lestrade insisted.

“I see, my friend, that you are recently divorced,” Marie said, advancing toward Lestrade with an unexpected and, John was forced to acknowledge, rather sexy grace. “So many hours you have spent alone in your tiny apartment, wondering if loneliness, mediocrity, and failure are all life will ever hold for you. But you have found out already, no, that today is a day of miracles? I am delivered from certain death by my dearest Sherlock and his darling companion, and you have opened a shining new chapter in the book of love. But you worry whether your new romance will prosper. Give me your palm, I will show you what the stars foretell.”

Marie reached for Lestrade’s hand. He extended it toward her, palm up. Sherlock lunged between them and smacked Lestrade’s hand away.

“She’s not clairvoyant, Lestrade,” Sherlock snapped. “She does exactly what I do. She just doesn’t tell people that it’s not magic.”

“Yes, Sherlock,” Marie said, with an indulgent smile. “Every inch the materialist, that boy. It is true that my half-hour call-in show, ‘Talking Tarot with Madame Sosostris,’ airs only infrequently during the very small hours of the evening at a time when only those who sleep alone would be watching television, and that the tan line marking the sadly empty space where your wedding band once sat is still well-defined. At the age of four Sherlock could have deduced from such evidence that you were newly divorced. And when such a man has the confidence to parade about barechested, after nearly succumbing to hypothermia, any adult with sense could deduce the new romance. All the same I am in fact clairvoyant. So is Sherlock.”

“For God’s sake,” Sherlock said, in disgust. “There is no such thing as psychic ability. Even what hack writers of crime fiction call intuition is the result of subconscious cognitive processes—“

“Tell me this,” said Marie, turning toward John. “Does he ever say to you that your thoughts are distracting him?”

“Yes,” John said, beginning to take an almost malicious pleasure in this strange encounter. “All the time.”

“In a world where psychic ability does not exist, this makes sense how?”

Unable to come up with a retort, Sherlock said, “Well then perhaps you can explain to us how you came to be unconscious in the sealed basement room of a house occupied by a gang of three by my estimate exceptionally twisted criminals who have already done one woman to death, and how it is that the Fates decreed that by pure chance the one woman we _were_ able to rescue from their clutches should turn out to be, of all people, _you_? Because whatever you pretend to believe about my paranormal abilities, Marie, _you_ are one thing I did not see coming.”

Marie blinked. “By chance?” She peered more closely at Sherlock. “Mycroft did not send you?”

Sherlock only shook his head. He was unused to being confused, and it did often render him speechless.

“That bastard!” Marie exclaimed. “My gods, the ingratitude. Before it all goes to the bad, I send your brother a text. Just before they confiscate the mobile, I get one back. ‘Unable to act personally in this matter. Putting my best man onto it.’” His best man, I think. The little beast, in my hour of danger he refuses me his help because it would in some way inconvenience Britannia. Imagine my boundless delight when I find that the boy whose bottom I wiped tenderly for two years while he defeated my most ingenious attempts at potty training has actually put three quite good men onto it, though curse my evil stars every last one of them is unavailable at this time. And now you tell me he _never contacted you?_ You found me _by chance?_ ”

Her voice had risen in anger, and her arms carved the air violently as she spoke. At that moment she appeared to John as, he imagined, she might have appeared to the toddler Sherlock: a formidable mountain of a woman, armed with occult knowledge and burning with divine wrath.

“Oh my God,” John burst out. “Sherlock, yesterday—before the party—when I was coming back from the store—“

Sherlock turned viciously on John. “Mycroft _did_ contact us. He sent one of his minions for you to ask you to ask me to help her and _you_ told her to sod off!”

“I didn’t know what it was about!” John shouted. “How _could_ I have known? You never even told me you had a nanny. Literally the only thing I know about your family history is that there is some one or some thing out there that you and Mycroft both refer to as ‘Mummy.’ I _assume_ this means you have a mother but for all I know ‘Mummy’ could be an android or an acronym for a top-secret genetics experiment. All _I_ knew was that Mycroft betrayed you and done his level best to have you killed and that I was _not_ going to let him fuck with either of us for one day longer.”

“Boys!” Lestrade shouted. “Can you save it for later, please. This is a murder investigation. Madame Sosostris here may your long-lost nanny and don’t think I don’t find that _very_ interesting, Sherlock, but she has also just survived a murder attempt. So have I. The Hyacinth Girl was not so lucky.”

“Ah,” said Marie, with real pain. “So Sophia is dead. I felt it. I hoped for the best, but I felt it.”

“Sophia,” Lestrade said.

“Sophia Kratides,” said Marie, with a sigh. “That poor child. I think she was marked for death, that one, before she was even born. Sherlock, my dear, have you a handkerchief please. The central air in that horrible place, it has given me a very bad cold.”

Sherlock thrust a piece of crumpled white cotton at her. Marie philosophically searched for a relatively clean section, and coughed into it with great abandon.

“You’re the one,” Lestrade said, when she was done. “You’re the one they rigged that shower for. You were supposed to drown in there, weren’t you? And instead I nearly did.”

“Yes,” Marie said, dropping her hands into her lap and picking at the edges of the handkerchief. “Yes, Kemp, he explained to me all about how and why I would die in there, before injecting me.”

“Did he say _why_ he was choosing that particular method?” Lestrade said. “Because of all the insane—“

“Ah, Detective Inspector,” said Marie. “You know the criminal element, how superstitious they are. These men discover that they need a Greek interpreter. They know of me. To test the waters, they send the most charming one to my place of business late one night to ask me for a tarot reading. I oblige. During the reading I tell him to fear death by water.”

“Why?” Lestrade said.

“I often throw it in,” Marie said, waving the hanky dismissively. “We live on an island, it is good advice. Well, the devil with the angel’s face, Harold Latimer, does not care; he believes that even the fates love a sharp dressed man. That giggling maniac Kemp is another story. He takes it into his head that _someone_ involved in this sorry affair must be fated to drown and conceives the idea of drowning _me_ in order to break, as he says, the gypsy curse I have put upon them. You must be very careful when you go in search of these men, Sherlock. Latimer is dangerous in the ordinary criminal way but this man Kemp is a sadist. English by birth but raised in Tunisia; if he has never worked professionally as a torturer I will renounce all claims to extrasensory perception. Perhaps he was made redundant by the Arab Spring.”

“A stopped clock is right twice a day,” Sherlock observed. “Latimer did in fact die by water. Not _of_ it exactly; but _near_ it.”

“He is dead?” Marie said, as her hands flew into the air. “Ah, Sherlock, you bring me joy. I only wish I could have broken the thread of his life with my own hands. If only—“

Something about the handkerchief caught her attention. She pulled open one of the folds and examined it more closely.

“It is blue,” she said, frightened. “It is blue. Why blue? Doctor. Doctor, tell me why it is blue.”

Marie thrust a trembling hand toward John. On the crumpled, dirty fabric there was in fact a blue and still-glistening smear.

John remembered the sight of that suffocating kitchen, the juicer, the length of flexible tubing coiled up by the stainless steel sink.

The hairs rose along the backs of his arms before his brain told him why.

“You were drugged first,” John said to Marie. “And then—before they put you in there they—Greg. Greg, does your throat hurt?”

“It’s killing me, since you ask,” Lestrade said. “Sinuses too. Central air got to me too, I suppose.” Lestrade held up one hand and looked at it. “Also my fingers seem to have fallen asleep. Is that the cold? Will it wear off?”

John felt his pockets. “Oh God. I must have dropped it somewhere. My kit, Sherlock—“

Sherlock was already gone, running toward the window that John and Lestrade had axed open. He knew.

“Tell me what is the matter, Doctor,” said Marie. “I am an old woman, I have looked into the abyss many times and your friend here is also no stranger to death.”

“Nightshade,” John gasped. “While you were unconscious they pulped up some nightshade berries in the juicer and then intubated you and pumped it in. The tube goes in through your nose and over your soft palate and into your stomach but if you’re not a professional there will be a couple false starts and some of the…slurry got stuck in the postnasal drip at the back of your oh thank God.”

John took the kit from Sherlock’s hand and opened it up.

“Greg, do you know how to make yourself sick?”

“Listening to Sherlock often brings on a kind of queasy feeling,” Lestrade said.

“Be _serious_ , Greg!”

“Yeah, the old gag reflex, I can find it.”

“Do it then. Bring it all up. You too, Marie.”

But Marie had already done it. She was on her knees, still shuddering, staring with horrified fascination at the ugly blue splotch on the ground in front of her.

Sherlock let out something between a roar and a howl. He charged back toward the yawning door that led back into the house, his feet nearly burning the grass.

“Sherlock!” John shouted. “Call an ambulance! Call a—Christ, he’s gone. He’s just taken the mobile and gone. Right. Well.” John’s fingers traveled over the row of phials he had stored in their little pockets, all color coded. “P is for Purple and for Physostigmine. Here we are.”

John drew out an empty syringe, pushed down the plunger and pierced the cap on the phial with a needle. He drew the liquid into the syringe.

“You just carry around antidotes to all the poisons known to man, everywhere you go?” Lestrade demanded.

“Not all of them,” John said, checking the syringe for air bubbles. “Only the really interesting ones.”

“Why?” Greg said, extending his bare arm for the needle.

“Because I live with Sherlock Holmes.”

John broke the skin and pressed the plunger.

“Tch,” said Marie. “Do not tell me he is still eating poisonous plants just to know how they taste.”

“He is,” John said, motioning for her arm.

“Poor boy.” Marie took the injection stoically. “I blame Mycroft. Always conducting experiments, and Sherlock right there to be his laboratory rat.”

The laboratory rat came racing up the hill toward them, waving a handful of papers.

“I found the purchase agreement,” Sherlock shouted. “The houses in this development have docking privileges at Cadogan Pier. That must have been where Latimer was heading when he got derailed. There’s just a chance that they might not have already shipped out, that they might be hiding out in the boat. We might still catch them if we hurry.”

All three of them stared at Sherlock.

“Sherlock,” John said, slowly, trying to keep his voice down. “I know you’d like nothing more than to haul these bastards back to Baker Street and throw them out the window. But Kemp and He Who Does Not Yet Have A Name are long gone. Latimer’s corpse is on its way to St. Bart’s. Greg and Marie have been nearly murdered _twice_. _She_ needs oxygen, _he_ needs a CAT scan, they _both_ need their stomachs pumped, and _you_ , right now, need to call an ambulance and the police as well because _apparently_ nobody in this fucking place gives a toss about what happens to the neighbors.”

Sherlock raised his eyes. They flicked from one mud-colored house to the next, looking at the windows, the sullen dark eyes that had refused to open.

Lestrade stretched a hand up for the mobile. “Give it here, Sherlock. I may be poisoned but I know who to ring.”

With a snarl of defeat, Sherlock handed John’s mobile to Greg. He began dialing.

“Don’t be angry with your friend, Sherlock,” Marie said, gently. “He is doing what must be done. Vengeance does not belong to you only.”

Lestrade’s voice was a little ragged, but loud in the silence. “Hello? Yeah, it’s Greg. Send two cars and an ambulance round to 115A Friar’s Mead. And come yourself if you possibly can.” There was a pause. “Yes, I know it’s not your area, Toby. Do a man a favor. Do yourself a favor. Do the sodding population of London a favor. It’s an absolute stonker of a case and they gave it to fucking Athelney Jones. I can’t take it over because I’m _in_ it.” Pause. “Because the suspects just tried to kill me.” Lestrade laughed, bitterly. “Ah, _now_ you’re interested. Look, Sherlock is in on this one and by the looks of things he’s highly motivated. This could be your breakout case, Gregson.” Another pause. “Right. See you soon.”

Sherlock looked down at John, still kneeling on the ground and putting everything back in the kit. The discovery of Marie seemed to have thrown up some sort of invisible barrier between them.

Lestrade opened another call. “Hello…Molly?”

John zipped the kit up while Lestrade waited to get a word in edgewise.

“I’m all right. It was…well it was horrendous, Molly, but it’s over, thank God.”

Lestrade’s voice had changed. It was vibrating with something richer, something a little stranger than anything John would have thought Greg had in him.

“No, no, don’t bother, I’ll be going off in the ambulance when it gets here anyway. No—wait—Molly—I said I’m all right and I meant it, they just need to check me, all right? I’ll call you when I’m settled and you can come straight to hospital.”

Sherlock was watching too now, and immobile as his face and body were John could still feel Sherlock’s disbelief and disapproval. _Lestrade and Molly_. _So disappointingly obvious._

Maybe there was something to this psychic ability thing.

“Yes. I would like you to come,” Lestrade repeated. “I truly would. I hate hospitals, Molly. Hate them. Always have.” Lestrade laughed. “Well, we won’t fall out over it, all right?”

John turned back to Sherlock. The telepathy or whatever was no longer enabled. Sherlock’s face was as blank as a statue’s.

“Thank God you got the door open,” John said. “What was the combination, anyway?”

Sherlock sat down, glancing toward Marie.

“Well, they knew at least one word of Greek,” he said.

Marie was silent.

“Which one?” John asked.

Sherlock finally said, “Atropos.”

Marie tilted her head back, squinting up at the sky, searching for the stars. But the sky was blank. In the distance, they could hear the rumble of thunder. So far, no rain.

“So many wheels turning around us, every moment of our lives,” Marie said. “We will never know all that the stars wrote for us at our births, all that they are still writing. But I see this one thing very clearly, Sherlock. It may take a little time. But these men will pay for what they have done.”

*             *             *

To her, Molly realized, a hospital meant something completely different from what it meant to most people. It was so strange to be actually on the patient ward, opening the door to one of the patient rooms. She thought of a hospital as a kind of way station, a place where the dead gathered before moving on to their separate destinations. Not peaceful exactly, but quiet enough. No more striving, no more pain. Just a methodical search for the last few answers to the last few questions. How and why and at the hands of whom. The minor mysteries of death.  

Molly shivered a little, and pushed the door to Greg’s room open.

He was lying in bed, wrapped in one of those ridiculous cotton print robes, propped up on pillows. At his side sat a younger man with dark, cropped hair, wearing a rumpled brown suit and hunched over a notebook.

Lestrade’s pale face broke into a smile when he caught sight of her. Molly stopped, looking down for a moment in confusion. There were all these things happening inside her now, when she looked at Greg or even thought of him, that she didn’t know what to do with. She understood they must constitute some sort of physiological response, but that didn’t help her figure out where to look when she felt them.

“I brought you some tea,” she said, brandishing a thermos.

“Brilliant, Molly, that’s just what I need,” Lestrade said. “They’ve been pumping hot fluids into me, of course, but hospital tea, you may as well just drink hot water straight from the tap. Inspector Tobias Gregson, this is Molly Hooper. I’ve just been giving Toby my statement.”

Molly looked around for a chair. Gregson half-rose to offer his, but Lestrade patted the side of the bed; and although she wasn’t sure it was right, that was where Molly wanted to be. She perched awkwardly on the bed. Lestrade took the thermos, uncapped it, and swigged the hot tea straight from the bottle.

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Hooper,” said Gregson.

It was strange being so close to Lestrade. She could smell the hospital soap, and the detergent in his cotton wrap, and then beneath that a faded and weak version his own scent, familiar but still new.

“Everyone calls me Molly,” she said.

“Any news on the shooting?” Lestrade said.

Gregson lifted his hands. “I’m not getting into a territorial feud with Sally Donovan on her first solo homicide. We’ve spoken, you know,” he went on. “She’s still interviewing Harriet Watson, she says she’ll let me see the transcript when it’s done.”

Lestrade whistled. “Interviewing, eh. That poor woman. Thrown under the Sally Donovan Express just to save my miserable life.”

A momentary vision of Harry screaming “It’s my fucking business!” into Donovan’s face almost made Molly burst out laughing.

“We’ve been over the house in Friar’s Mead,” Gregson said, shaking his head. “Never seen anything like it. The greenhouse was full of opium poppies and nightshade plants. The refrigerator was crammed with big clear plastic boxes full of nightshade berries and poppy-heads. Weird bits of leaves and roots in the vegetable drawers that we’re still trying to identify. Down in the kitchen it looked like they were setting up a drug lab, but it wasn’t for heroin. I don’t think anyone ever actually prepared food in that kitchen. We didn’t find a crumb anywhere in the house, in fact, nor so much as a sweet wrapper. From the clothing left behind it appears there were three men sharing the house, but they were only using two of the bedrooms."

Lestrade nodded. "Sherlock's guess is that Kemp and Latimer were partners and that the American—he’s sure it’s an American, water pressure or something--owned the house and was allowing them to use it while they all worked together on this one project."

Gregson nodded. "Reasonable enough hypothesis. Nobody’s home at the house agents’ at this time of night, of course; but we’ll get all that information soon enough.” Gregson stood up, stretching. “May as well step across and interview Ms. Melas.”

“I’ll come with you,” Lestrade said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“Greg, you should be resting,” Molly said.

Lestrade grabbed a hospital-issue dressing gown from the closet and put it on. “The more I know, the better I’ll rest. Same for you. Come on.”

Gregson appeared to accept the fact that Molly was coming along on the interview. They only had to walk two doors down to Room 420. Sitting up in bed, wrapped in another cotton print hospital gown, was a woman in what looked to be her late fifties, with long, dramatically curling black hair that was beginning to go gray. Sherlock was curled up in a chair in the corner, watching her like a hawk and saying very little. John had drawn up a chair on the other side of the bed.

“Molly,” John said, standing up. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, glancing up at Lestrade.

John offered Molly his chair. Sherlock watched her sit down in it, and said nothing. Instead he turned to Lestrade.

“Inspector Tobias Gregson of the Yard,” said Lestrade, doing his best to make everyone forget he was in a hospital gown and dressing robe, “let me introduce Sherlock Holmes of Baker street.”

“Yes, I recognize him, thanks,” said Gregson, nodding at Sherlock. “It’s a great honor.”

“Gregson,” Sherlock said. “I believe there’s a file on you in my Scotland Yard’s Least Useless folder. This is Marie Melas, and this is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson.”

John shot Sherlock an unfriendly look. Lestrade nearly smiled, and then said, “By the way, Ms. Melas, this is _my_ friend and colleague Molly Hooper.”

John gave out a weird little cough. The woman in the bed looked at John, then back at Sherlock, and finally Molly.

“What a charming colleague you are, dear,” she said, giving Molly a warm smile. “The future looks bright indeed, Inspector Lestrade. Please, everyone, call me Marie.”

“Ms. Melas,” said Gregson doggedly, “I wondered if I might ask you a few questions.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” said the woman, gesturing toward him. “I will do everything I can to help. I am afraid both chairs are taken, but there is plenty of room at the foot of the bed.”

Sherlock either didn’t hear the hint, or didn’t care. He coiled up in that chair and just kept watching out of those glittering and, Molly thought, rather unsettling eyes. John went round the bed to stand near Sherlock’s chair, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Lestrade sat on top of the radiator, near Molly.

“Now about last night,” said Gregson, as he balanced himself on the bed. He drew out his notebook.

“Oh my dear,” said Marie. “You must begin much farther back.”

“Well, then,” said Gregson, “suppose you tell me how and when you first met the men who made the attempt on your life.”

“Further yet,” said Marie, with a smile. “Understand, we did not meet by chance, Inspector. I was approached, I will not say by whom—“

“What do you mean you won’t say?” Gregson said.

“It was obviously my brother Mycroft,” Sherlock snapped. “No doubt this was shortly after that shipment of artifacts was opened in Athens and howls of dismay echoed across the Mediterranean.”

“Sherlock is correct,” said Marie, with a stern glance in his direction. “Not discreet; but correct. You see in addition to my native Greek I speak also Arabic, Farsi, Pashtun, demotic French, German, Russian, Lithuanian, Italian, Serbian, Czech, Kazakh, I can read and write Sanskrit too when there is any call for it which frankly is not often. When not taping my half-hour call-in show ‘Talking Tarot with Madame Sosostris,’ which airs at 2:00am on Fridays on ITV 3 and can be downloaded on iTunes the day following, I sit in my little storefront down by the docks and tell people their fortunes. So many people have been swept from their homes by the storms of this hideous new century; they wash up on our shores, many of them speaking only as much English as they have seen printed on cheap cast-off t-shirts. I am known among these people as someone who can speak for them, someone who knows London, someone who for a small fee determined by a sliding scale may help get them out of any small difficulties they may encounter.”

Molly couldn’t see why Sherlock was so very annoyed with this speech. He looked positively petulant, and when she finished he rolled his eyes like a bored teenager.

“By which you mean swindling immigration officials and forging…” Sherlock began.

“Sherlock, please. I do not judge your work, do not judge mine.” It was the first time Molly had heard anything sharp in Marie’s voice. “The London these people inhabit, it is the underworld, it is the pit of Hades. I guide them through it. Someone must.”

Sherlock scoffed.

“I come to know, in the natural course of affairs, many things transpiring in this underworld. About ninety percent of it I do absolutely nothing, it is petty crime that at most will move some useless piece of wealth from point a to point b and leave the world as wretched as before. Occasionally, I hear of something planned that would, if it took place, take many human lives. On those occasions I might share my knowledge of the future with Mycroft, and he might do a little wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey and the future turns out differently. You understand?” Marie said, smiling at Gregson.

“You’re an undercover counterterrorism operative,” Gregson replied.

“I do not work for Mycroft’s masters,” said Marie, loftily. “I am no one’s servant, civil or otherwise. I am not a double agent, I am a free agent. This you must understand.”

“Very well,” said Gregson. “So…”

“So Mycroft came to me this time. He wished to know if I had heard of anyone trying to dispose of ancient gems, including a blue carbuncle. Well, this carbuncle, it is legendary, now I am intrigued. I have heard nothing, but I tell him I am, how is it you young men say, ‘on the case.’”

Sherlock groaned. John said, “Give it a rest, Sherlock.”

“Thank you, my friend,” said Marie. “Such a polite boy he was; but alas, it seems his manners are now with the snows of yesteryear.”

“Yes,” Sherlock muttered. “Along with my belief in unconditional love.”

John started. Lestrade coughed. Gregson looked down at this notebook.

Marie’s face became terrifying. She turned on Sherlock.

“In this life, Sherlock, everything is conditional,” she said. “You are guaranteed nothing, not even your next breath. One morning you wake up, you go out to the fields thinking you will have a nice shank of lamb for supper, you know exactly how you will braise it. Before sunset your house is burning, the livestock are dead, and the money in your purse is trash issued by a government that no longer exists. Our presence on this planet is conditional. You heard it yourself tonight, Sherlock—thunder, in England, in April. Nothing is given, not the seasons, not the growth of plants from seeds buried in earth, not the survival of the human race. We are playthings in the hands of the gods and you have surely noticed by this time that most of the gods are bastards. Only a child expects every tomorrow to be exactly like today. Your brother, for all his brain, is still a child. From you I expected better.”

Gregson dropped his pencil. There was an awkward silence that no one seemed to know how to break.

“To resume,” Marie said, as the bewildered Gregson recovered his pencil. “On Tuesday last this Latimer comes to my shop to ask for a reading. I see what the cards foretell for him, which is frankly alarming, but I do what I can to soften the blow. One never wishes to lose a client to anything but death. Then he says, I hear you work as an interpreter. He gives me a piece of paper which is covered with words scrawled, very badly, in Greek. I look at this paper. I am amazed by it. How can I…imagine, Inspector, that your William Blake traveled through time to modern-day Picadilly Circus, there took some LSD, and then tried to write about what he saw. It was fantasy, it was nightmare, it was the desperate cry of a passionate soul and a wild imagination.”

Sherlock was finally sitting forward, with his eyes all the way open. John had perked up as well.

“I look at the words and I see the handwriting of a young girl. I see her quite clearly, this girl; bright eyes, long dark hair, pale and beautiful and terrified and with an utterly broken heart. I know as surely as I know my own name that she is being tortured by these men in some subterranean room and that there is something they want to know from her that she refuses to tell them. I begin translating her script for this man, and let me tell you it is not easy. After two minutes, he says to me, ‘Just tell me if it says anything about about a blue stone.’”

The little bark of satisfaction that Molly knew so well leapt from Sherlock’s throat.

“Well the paper does mention a blue stone, in many different ways; but not in any way that this man could understand or be satisfied by. He paid and he left with this piece of paper.”

Gregson was now so astonished that he had stopped taking notes.  

“So,” said Sherlock. “They were interrogating Sophia about the whereabouts of the blue carbuncle.”

“And for some reason she was answering them in writing, in Greek,” John said.

“Tape,” Molly blurted out.

“That’s it, Molly,” Lestrade said. “We found—well, Molly found—residue on the victim’s face showing her mouth had been taped shut. They asked her the questions and she wrote out the answers. But why in Greek?”

“Maybe it’s the only language she speaks,” John said.

“No,” Sherlock said. “They speak no Greek or they wouldn’t have risked consulting Marie. But if Sophia spoke no English at all they wouldn’t try to interrogate her. She’s been in England since the fall and she’s inspired passionate devotion in the hearts of two women who as far as we know do not speak Greek, so she must have at least _some_ English.”

“Sherlock,” Marie said gently. “I was there. Let me tell the story.”

Sherlock subsided into his funk. John shot him a dirty look. Lestrade smiled.

“Please continue, Ms. Melas,” said Gregson, after an awkward pause.

“Well. I have heard that a famous blue carbuncle has gone astray; I have a man come in and present to me a document which obviously written under the influence of either divine inspiration or hallucinogenic drugs in which all that concerns him is a certain blue stone; I am the wisest woman in Europe. I tell Mycroft that this Harold Latimer is looking for the blue carbuncle. He says well done, watch and wait.”

Marie picked up a plastic cup of water and drained it. She went on, more grimly.

“Mycroft makes inquiries. He finds that this Latimer became intimate—I will not say how, I will only remark that the man has the physique of Apollo, the face of an archangel, and a sense of fashion which is quite unusual to find in an entirely heterosexual man—with an archaeologist at the British Museum who was involved in preparing the shipment. This archaeologist has of course been questioned but nothing unusual was noted apart from some difficulty recalling anything that took place on the evening two days prior to the departure of the shipment. Mycroft deduces the use of some sort of truth serum which produces amnesia in the victim. He has a lead now. This is of course satisfactory; I only wish that Mycroft had not pursued this lead so very clumsily.”

Sherlock forgot for a moment about being petulant. Both of his feet hit the floor as he leaned forward in openmouthed outrage.

“He gave you away?”

“I fear so,” said Marie, sadly.

“No. I don’t believe it,” Sherlock cried. “He wouldn’t have done it on purpose, and he couldn’t have done it by accident—“

“Sherlock, my boy, your brother Mycroft may be the most intelligent man in the northern hemisphere but he is still mortal and he missed the mark this time,” Marie snapped. “You know yourself that rather than cross the street to buy an apple at the corner market he would spend twenty minutes ordering one on line and wait an hour to have it delivered, he is that averse to leaving his chair. Had he pursued these inquiries on foot and face to face he would have left no electron trails. But no, he must be the spider sitting in the center of the web, letting it all come to him. Sherlock, you were a demon child but I said to myself the first day I set foot in your parents’ house that it was Mycroft that would be the death of me. And he very nearly was.”

Molly had never imagined Sherlock as a child. It had never even crossed her mind to try. He seemed sui generis, as if he had sprung fully formed from a crack in the earth. But now, looking at his eyes through the screen of dark hair that nearly obscured them, Molly could almost see it. He’d have been a lonely child. Withdrawn. Playing by himself. Lots of imaginary friends, not many real ones.

Oh wait. That was her childhood.

“Thursday night, I am awakened by the sense that all is not right in the house. Indeed it is not. This Latimer is downstairs rifling through my papers, and he has brought along a companion with whom he is whispering. I consider the police. But if they apprehend these men, what is to become of the poor creature who is in their power? I think, these men have come for me, yes, but if they wanted to kill me they would have done that first. They need me; but they wish to have power over me, and they will destroy me when they are finished. Or so they think. I am of peasant stock, we are hard to kill.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Lestrade, gallantly.

“I send to Mycroft a text telling him that Latimer and friend will soon take me captive and asking him for help. Just before they come upon me I get his reply. ‘Unable to act personally.’ I tell you I am so angry that I _nearly_ overcome both sons of bitches when they spring upon me. But I am an old woman and I am overcome instead.”

Marie sighed.

“They blindfold me and put a bag on my head and bind my hands with that nasty cloth tape and throw me in the back of an SUV which must have been made in America where they can send a probe to Jupiter but cannot engineer a smooth ride on an all-wheel drive vehicle, and this and that and when the bag comes off at last, I am sitting in a chair in a small bedroom whose walls are covered in shockingly vulgar paper. The door to the room is locked. In the room with me are Harold Latimer, that maniac Kemp, and a young girl with long, dark hair, dressed all in black, and her clothes, well, they are very much dirtied and torn but at one time it was the kind of ensemble a working girl of some means and refinement might wear to a party she was throwing for her good clients, you understand?”

Gregson looked back at her, and said, “You mean she was dressed like a prostitute.”

“Such a literal mind you have, Detective,” Marie said. “But yes, that is what I mean, only please to retain this one nuance: these are not the clothes of a streetwalker. These clothes hang off her now for she is nearly skin and bones, the poor child, but they were once chosen by her, with pride, freely.”

“How do you know that?” said Gregson.

“My friend, I am clairvoyant. Also, this is not the taste of the home-grown English pimp. Her clothes are provocative, but very sophisticated, very Continental. She must have been a lovely girl, Inspector. Before they trapped her and starved her and drove her mad. A beautiful, spiritual, ardent young woman. This is what she would have been, before she met them.”

Gregson was not, Molly noticed, writing that part down down.

“She is propped in an armchair. Her eyes are not vacant exactly. They see things that are not in the room. I see that she has been drugged. There is a piece of that nasty tape across her mouth.”

Molly shivered. The corners of John’s mouth worked as he tried to swallow his own feelings. Sherlock’s eyes glittered with anticipation.

“Placed in front of her is a little end table with a few sheets of unlined paper. The little maniac puts a pen in the girl’s hand. She puts it to the paper and waits. Kemp says to me, ‘This is our predicament, madame. We have administered to her a harmless herbal concoction which increases her willingness to cooperate. While she is under its influence, she is quite willing to tell us all she knows; but unfortunately, while she is under its influence, she can only express herself in her native tongue, which I am afraid is Greek to us.’ And then he laughs. The little bastard laughs at his own joke. Oh how gladly I would have cut his throat on the spot.”

Gregson swallowed. Sherlock made a gesture of dismissal. “Yes, yes, Marie, we are all very impressed with your avenging fury. So they were to ask the questions and you were to translate her answers.”

“Always impatient, our Sherlock,” said Marie. “They began with the questions. Where was the carbuncle. Where had Ryder hidden it. How could they get to it. What was Ryder really planning to do with it. And the poor girl at first is dutifully writing the answers and it is all the same thing: I don’t know. I don’t know. She told me it was somewhere safe. I don’t know. For a half an hour we do this.”

“Who’s Ryder?” Molly said, bewildered.

“Ryder is—was, now—Sophia’s lover,” said Marie.

Gregson’s pencil stopped. He looked up. “And what else do we know about him?”

“ _Her_ ,” John interjected, pulling out his mobile. “Ryder Kingfisher, oldest daughter of Lily Fairleigh and Albert Kingfisher. Lily Fairleigh was working in London as an editor at an old and very well-respected publishing firm until it was bought by a conglomerate that made her redundant. She and her husband returned to Essex, where her mother was still living on what had once been a thriving family farm. They and their five children rebooted Kingfisher Farm. Then Albert was sent to Afghanistan in the first deployment. He was demobilized in 2006, but that’s all I can find.”

John tried to get Sherlock’s attention, which seemed to be wandering.

“That in itself is weird,” John finally went on. “You join the Army, the first thing they do is start generating information about you. Beyond his initial physical exam, this man doesn’t even have medical records. There are no pictures of him on the Kingfisher Farms website dating from after his deployment. There’s nothing on that site, in fact, about either the fact that he was deployed or the fact that he came home. They don’t even mention the name of his regiment. You’d think they’d advertise it. Family farm, English rural tradition, you know, run by a war veteran with a long record of distinguished service to Queen and Country. Even if he was wounded, as Sherlock seems to be sure he was, well…”

John paused for a moment. Molly was sure he was thinking of the same images she was thinking of. The injuries these soldiers were surviving now, the ones John had been trained to treat...

“Maybe that would explain why no pictures, but you’d still tell the story. It makes no sense their leaving it out.”

“Unless his service was not distinguished,” Sherlock murmured.

John gave him a sharp glance.

“The point was, I believe,” Gregson said, “that Kemp and Latimer knew that this Ryder woman had the stone, and they wanted Sophia to tell them where Ryder had put it.”

“Which doesn’t make sense, Sherlock,” John said. “They were already planning the exchange. They would get it back from Ryder then. Why go on tormenting the victim? Why risk bringing Marie in?”

“Two reasons,” said Sherlock, quietly. “One: They don’t trust Ryder. Remember, they seized Sophia and demanded the stone from Ryder a month ago.”

Gregson tucked the notebook under one leg and pulled out a tablet.

“She _told_ Kemp and Latimer that she couldn’t get her hands on it for four weeks,” Sherlock said. “But they didn’t believe her, and why should they? She can’t possibly have told them the true story. ‘Well, you see, my brother fed the thing to a chicken and my mother has banned me from the family farm and for some reason I fear her ban so much I am unwilling to violate it even to save my lover’s life so I won’t be able to recover the carbuncle until they bring the chicken to London to market which will be in four weeks’ time’ no I don’t think so, John.”

“What…” Gregson said. “What…chicken?”

“Save the questions, Inspector,” Sherlock said. “If you interrupt every time something escapes your comprehension we’ll never finish. Simply make a list of all the things you will need explained to you slowly using monosyllabic words and we will go over it after Marie has finished her recitation. So. The truth is a non-starter. Whatever Ryder told them to buy time, it was a lie, and they’d have seen through it instantly. The cannot possibly imagine the truth, so they assume that Ryder is perpetrating some commonplace little double-cross. They are trying to find out from Sophia what Ryder’s scheme is, and how they can recover the carbuncle themselves. They’ve tried to starve it out of her, they’ve tried to scare it out of her, one can only hope they haven’t tried to beat it out of her—“

Molly let out a little shriek. Lestrade put a hand on her shoulder. Sherlock, ranting away, didn’t notice.

“--and now, as a last resort, they're trying to drug it out of her. The nightshade and the opium you found in the kitchen, Gregson.”

Gregson’s eyes popped. “Who told you we found—“

“I’m Sherlock Holmes, Gregson, nobody has to _tell me_ anything. From what we observed in the Chelsea Physic Garden it’s clear that Ryder and Sophia knew both Latimer and Kemp well. Probably they all met through Irene Adler. Kemp is, Marie tells us, a sadist; Latimer, we might surmise, is a masochist, and masochists are Irene Adler’s bread and butter. Latimer at least pretended to Ryder that he had feelings for Sophia, which suggests that Latimer was a favored client at the House of Adler and that Sophia worked with him on a regular basis.”

Gregson leaned over to whisper to Lestrade, “Is he always like this?”

Lestrade nodded. “First three or four cases it’s just hang on and try to keep up.”

“So, for you talking amongst yourselves at the back of the classroom,” Sherlock said, “let’s review. Latimer is a jewel thief. He is also a client of Irene Adler’s. Sophia has worked with him and they are intimate enough that Latimer knows about Ryder’s home-made twilight sleep.”

“What’s twilight—“ Gregson began.

“Later,” Lestrade whispered.

Twilight sleep, Molly thought. The dark ages. It belonged in the museum with ether and chloroform. Just knowing that someone had brought it back into the world gave her the shivers.

“Ryder agrees to give them a sample,” Sherlock said, “which Latimer then uses on that unfortunate archaeologist. Thanks to what he reveals under the influence, the jewel heist goes off without a hitch. Latimer and Kemp and perhaps the mysterious American with the enormous showerhead, let us not forget him, realize that this drug is a marvelous addition to their toolkit but unfortunately Ryder’s version has to be taken orally which requires them to either physically overpower the victim or burn time gaining his trust. They work down in the laboratory on turning Ryder’s recipe into a serum that can be administered intravenously.”

John let out a little cry of comprehension.

“Meanwhile Sophia and Latimer continue their business relationship. Like many a man in his position, Latimer has convinced himself that their connection is not purely meretricious and that Sophia cherishes a tender regard for him. He is thus all the more enraged when he discovers that Sophia has abused his trust, pocketed the most valuable trinket in his stolen hoard, and passed it to Ryder, who for reasons that remain mysterious passed it to George, who passed it to a young Essex White with a barred tail.”

“Aha!” Lestrade shouted. “That chicken Harry bought, that you called me about this morning. _That’s_ the connection!”

“At last,” Sherlock observed mournfully. “Yes, Lestrade, that is how our case came to be your case. So. Sophia and Ryder believe at first that they are safe. But Latimer discovers the theft. He gets someone--most likely the American, perhaps she wouldn't have known him--to decoy Sophia out to the Friar’s Mead house for what she believes will be a private session. He takes Sophia prisoner, and then tells Ryder to turn over the jewel or else, whereupon Ryder says she doesn’t have it and begs for more time. They agree to keep Sophia alive for four weeks. And off Ryder goes looking for the jewel.”

“And why does it take so long?” Molly demanded. Her voice sounded a little high and strained, even to her. “Why can’t she just go to the farm and kill that bird and bring it here and end that poor girl’s misery? Why does she let her be starved and poisoned and—“

Marie slowly got out of her bed, and came over to Molly. She knelt down on the floor by the chair and took both of Molly’s hands in hers.

“You have seen the body,” Marie said, looking up into Molly’s eyes. “You have read the story of her suffering. It is a terrible story, yes. But she is at peace now. You need not weep for her. She has gone to a place better than this. And it is a place that I think will not be wholly strange to her.”

All the twinges and prickles, the warnings that told Molly there was a major cry coming on, quieted down as she looked into Marie’s dark eyes. Her breathing slowed. Over the image of that cold body on the cold slab she could almost see the poor woman standing in that better place, eyes open, arms full of hyacinths, dew glistening in her long dark hair, wreathed in light.

“Yes, thanks very much Marie,” Sherlock broke in. “Caring. Marie’s brilliant at it.”

Marie took a deep breath, patted Molly’s hand once, and got to her feet. She sat on the bed, not looking at Sherlock.

“I am sorry, Molly,” said Marie. “I do not know the answer to your question.”

“I do,” said Gregson.

Everyone’s head turned to look at him. He had his tablet on his knees and he looked, for the first time, as if he were enjoying himself.

“Kingfisher Farm’s in Essex, right,” said Gregson, bouncing a little in his seat. “You put Ryder Kingfisher’s name into the City of London databases, you get nothing. I put her into the Essex County records, and eureka!”

“Eureka?” Lestrade said, glancing at him.

“Greek, Lestrade. ‘I have found it.’ That’s what eureka means,” Sherlock snapped.

“She _did_ try,” Gregson said. “Ryder made two visits to Kingfisher Farms, just about four weeks ago. The first time she got into a physical altercation with her mother, Lily Fairleigh Kingfisher. Her daughter Jeanie called the police, and Ryder was taken into custody. While she was being held on remand, Mrs. Kingfisher got an emergency barring order against Ryder.”

“Against her own daughter?”

“Ryder’s over eighteen—barely—and the assault was witnessed,” Gregson shrugged. “Well, they released Ryder after her mother dropped the charges, but then two days later the mother calls the police _again_ , saying Ryder’s on the property. Now she’s in violation of the barring order so she goes straight into custody. She pleads out, of course, gets fifteen days suspended and a warning not to return to the property, but she’s not released till the following Tuesday. After that she must have decided she needed a Plan B.”

“One for our side, Toby,” said Lestrade. 

Sherlock favored Lestrade with a sardonic glance. Then he said, “Put Albert Kingfisher into your Essex database.”

Gregson fiddled with the tablet. He stared at it in silence.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Now _that_ is interesting,” Sherlock replied. “Thank you, Inspector Gregson.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Gregson, with a smile.

“Thanks, I will,” Sherlock answered.

Gregson glared at him. Lestrade said, “Take no notice, Gregson, all this slagging is just his way of saying he wants to be friends.”

“It is not!” Sherlock shouted.

“Boys,” John said, wearily.

“What’s the second reason?” Molly said.

“Molly?” said Lestrade.

“Sherlock said there were two reasons why they were interrogating Sophia. What’s the second reason?”

She met Sherlock’s eyes. He looked, for a moment, gentle, and rather sad.

“The second, reason, my dear,” said Marie, “is that those men never had any intention of freeing Sophia.”

Molly’s throat began to constrict again.

“She knew them, Molly,” Sherlock said, quietly. “If she went to the police afterward it was over for them. They kept her alive to motivate Ryder. But as soon as they had the carbuncle, they would have killed her. They would have found a way to kill Ryder too. At the exchange, if there had to be an exchange; but it would have been easier and less messy to find the stone themselves first, then take care of the girls separately.”

Molly went cold all over. Then she felt one hand begin to warm up. Lestrade was by her side, holding her hand, looking up at Sherlock as if daring him to pass a remark.

“So,” Gregson prompted, when the silence became uncomfortable. “For half an hour she says ‘I don’t know,’ and then…?”

“And then,” said Marie, with a sigh. “And then, the drug takes its full effect.”

Marie passed a hand over her forehead, stroking it wearily as she closed her eyes.

“Listen, my friends,” she said. “So many have sought to reach the great beyond by consuming some plant or pill or synthetic chemical and ninety-five percent of the time the only result is another bogus pipe dream to add to an ever-growing pile of New Age shite. You will excuse the language, it is a sore spot with me. But for one in a hundred—a thousand—ten thousand—a slight adjustment to the neurotransmitters opens a portal to the divine. For Sophia Kratides, this twilight sleep, it is not an anaesthetic. It is a gateway. It reveals to her visions terrifying and beautiful of worlds beyond the visible.”

Sherlock threw himself back into the chair, letting out a long and aggrieved breath. John sat forward. Gregson and Lestrade watched agog. Marie was on her feet again, drawing fantastic shapes in the air with her gesturing hands.

“She does not sleep, this girl. She writhes. She moans. She tears at the tape on her face. They have seen this before, they move to strap her to the chair. But I am there now, and before they touch her they must first subdue me. And while they knock me down, from the floor I look up at her rising from the chair, tearing the hideous tape from her face. And out of her mouth comes a flood of the most beautiful Greek. Her eyes are dark whirlpools, her words are aflame with revelation, mystery inhabits her and speaks through her mouth. The Cumean sibyl has nothing on this girl. If the oracle at Delphi were in the room with us I tell you she would have been taking notes. And these men? This Latimer who says he loves her, this giggling Kemp? They want me to ask her, not what the powers are that rule us, not what lies behind the veil of death, not how we might keep the earth from dying. No. They want me to ask her where their sodding blue stone is.”

Marie was shaking with anger. John got up and silently handed her a cup of water. She drained it, then sat back on the bed, exhausted.

“Well, I am tired of their game. And I know by this time that neither of them knows Greek from Aramaic. So I pretend to ask, but in reality I speak to her about the visions. It helps her to describe them to me. Slowly she returns to the human world. I keep the conversation going long enough for the drug to begin wearing off. I tell her I am her friend. She says she is a prisoner here. I say tell me where you are held and tell me how they get you in and out. She says that there is an empty room with yellow wallpaper and the windows covered up and a door that will not open. I say how do they feed you. She says they do not feed me. I am starving, she says. They come into the room only to give her water and to ask her questions. She says that days ago, she cannot tell how many down there, they came to her they injected her with some kind of…she called it grape juice.”

Marie let out a despondent laugh. John groaned. Lestrade grimaced. Gregson looked confused for a moment, and then said, “The twilight…whatsit. That drug they were making. Blue from the nightshade, red from the opium, it would come out purple.”

Lestrade gave him an encouraging nod.

“Next thing she knew she was back in the room, bound and gagged as before. She knows she has lost time. It is the drug, I tell her, you do not remember what happened while you were under its power. She says that before they brought her to me they came to her again in her dungeon and gave her the same injection. And so the same thing is happening now. She says I cannot stand this, she says I want to die. I say, my child, do not lose hope, I will get you out of here.”

It was some time before Marie could go on.

“She says, ‘My name is Sophia Kratides,’” Marie said at last, in a voice that seemed like it came from the bottom of an empty well. “And just as I am thinking my gods child do not say your name out loud that much they will recognize and they will know what we are doing, Latimer knocks me to the ground, again. As my face is ground into the ugly carpet I hear the door open, and I know that Kemp and one other man, I can tell you nothing about him except that he has an American accent and a very bad temper, drag Sophia back to her dungeon. I too am bound with that infernal tape. Kemp returns. They have a conversation, right in front of me, about what to do with both of us, which tells me that they know they are going to kill me. Latimer wants to have another go with the drug tomorrow. Kemp thinks that is useless. He does not like having me in the house, I make him nervous, I have brought a curse on them all, he fears death by water. Latimer says they cannot kill Sophia now, the exchange is Saturday morning, what if before then Ryder demands proof that Sophia is alive. Very well, says Kemp, we will wait, in any case my plans will take some time to execute. Please, says Latimer, this job has already gone so far wrong, there are more important things in the world than your pleasure. Kemp becomes angry, he sweeps grandly from the room, he slams the door. Latimer picks up a baseball bat that has been leaning all the time in a corner, and for a while after that I remember nothing.”

“More important things than your pleasure,” Lestrade repeated. His eyes had begun to look a little dangerous.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed, his eyes fixed on some fascinating but invisible thing. “For Latimer, the killing is just something that has to be done. For Kemp, it is an end in itself, it is a rare and exquisite pleasure, sensual and intellectual and existential all at the same time. Because for him it is not about anything as crude as blood and gore. What he likes is the despair of the soul. That’s what’s delectable to him: the victim’s hopeless struggle, the futile suffering, the isolated agony. What he likes is for them to die trying. And he likes to know that they are dying alone. He likes to be somewhere else, miles away, doing something quite ordinary, secretly thrilling with the knowledge that his victim is being crushed in his ingeniously constructed murder machine.”

“God almighty,” John murmured.

“That’s how you would have died, Lestrade,” said Sherlock. “That’s how Marie would have died. That’s how, no doubt, they intended Sophia to die. But.”

Sherlock rose from the chair, propelled by some new insight.

“Latimer, the masochist, is Kemp’s lover, he indulges him when he can. But Latimer would also seem to be a little more practical. Latimer wants insurance. Fine, he says to Kemp. You have your fun, but I want a guarantee that they will actually die.”

“Ahhh, that son of a bitch,” Marie murmured.

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “As insurance, before loading you into your respective murder machines, they poison each of you first. And after that, let the games begin. Kemp gets to have his fun; Latimer has his peace of mind. Even if you spring the traps, the nightshade will finish you off.”

Molly held tighter to Lestrade’s hand. He squeezed hers back.

“Criminy,” Gregson said. “This man is even sicker than that demon cab driver of yours.”

John said, “I think Marie has something more that she wants to say.”

Marie lifted her head. She looked like a mother who had lost her firstborn.

“You haven’t told us how she escaped,” John said.

Marie shook her head. She grabbed onto the mattress with both hands, steadied herself, and sighed.

“I recover consciousness. I am trapped in that upstairs room. But I have been in situations like this before. The duck tape is easily dispensed with. The lock on the door is quite simple. It is a question of choosing the moment. There are three of them. It is not so big a house, I can hear much of what goes on. Preparations are being made, but I hear nothing to suggest that Sophia has been taken from her prison. I wait until the fall of darkness. I wait until the house has fallen asleep. I force the lock of my door and I search the house. On the lower level I find a steel door hidden behind wood and wallpaper with a blank plate snapped on in place of a doorknob. I pop off the plate. Now I must guess the combination. It is not hard for a clairvoyant. These men, they are thinking all the time about nightshade. Nightshade contains atropine. Atropine comes from the Greek Atropos, the fate who cuts the thread of your life. That Kemp, he has just enough learning to be dangerous. I punch in the code. I open the door. I prop it open and introduce myself into the kitchen. I look around, I see she is not there. The door to the other room, you have seen it yourselves, it is easy to open as long as you are on the right side of it. I walk in, the light is very dim but I can see her on her knees, hunched over something. Her hands are free. There are scraps of silver tape on the floor. She is shoveling something from a glass bowl into her mouth with both hands.”

“Oh my God,” Molly cried, putting her hands to her mouth. “No. Oh no.”

“Yes,” Marie shouted, bursting into tears. “That bastard Kemp must have done it. He put a bowl of nightshade berries in there with her. With a starving woman who has not tasted solid food in a month. She knew what it was. But she was starving,” Marie cried. “I come into the room, she sees me, she cries out in Greek, stop me, stop me, stop me!”

Sherlock slumped in his chair, aghast. John closed his eyes. Molly began to cry. Lestrade put an arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, crying.

“Why?” Gregson said, in a whisper. “If the exchange was to happen the next day. Why kill her the night before?”

“A fault in the machinery,” Sherlock said.

“What?” Gregson demanded.

“In the murder machine,” Sherlock said, his eyes unfocused, his mind on the horror of the past rather than the present moment. “Oh, yes, I see it. This is why Kemp agreed to the delay,” Sherlock said, picking up steam as it all unfolded. “He has been planning this killing since the day they took Sophia prisoner. He’s been starving her just to bring her to the the point where if he puts a bowl of poison berries in front of her, even if she’s bound, even if she _knows_ it’s poison, her hunger will drive her to break the bonds and to eat her own death. He loves this plan, yes, it is brilliant, and what makes it even better is this. The exchange is planned for Saturday morning, just after Ryder planned to recover the carbuncle. If Kemp times it right, they will have their hostage exchange and Ryder and Sophia will have their lovers’ reunion and Kemp will watch it all, the tears and the kisses and the never let me go, and then the convulsions will begin. And after Sophia has died in her lover’s arms, and Kemp has had time to savor the experience, they will kill Ryder. It will be easy. She will have lost her mind.”

Lestrade cleared his throat and said, rather huskily, “But that doesn’t happen.”

“No,” said Sherlock. “Because Kemp gets the timing wrong. He’s overeager and he rushes it. He overestimates how long it will take Sophia to free herself and he underestimates how long it will be before the poison takes effect.”

From Marie now there came a kind of wail, some inarticulate lament. For a few moments they listened to it. Then finally, very softly, Lestrade said, “I’m sorry.”

Marie shook her head.

“I have to tear the bowl from her hands,” Marie said, hollowly. “I try to make her vomit. I cannot find the reflex. I look for mustard, pepper, anything for an emetic. The cupboards are empty. I open the fridge, I see the berries, Sophia screams. I shut the fridge door. Sophia is fighting to get it open again, but it is a Sub-Zero, you know, you close it and there is a vacuum lock for thirty seconds at least so thank the gods for smaller mercies. I drag her out of the room. I hear footsteps moving above. I shove her through the door to the garden, go go go, run and don’t stop till you find help. She runs. I go back to the dungeon, I take the glass bowl, I break it in half in the sink and take the jagged remains in one hand. I close the door to the garden. I put my back to the door. Kemp and Latimer are there. I have my shards to fight with. I buy Sophia, perhaps, ten minutes.”

Marie sighed.

“Latimer uses on me the baseball bat. And after that, I remember nothing, until I awoke and found myself trying to throttle the good doctor. The rest you know.”

They sat in silence. John looked at Sherlock; Sherlock looked at Marie. Gregson glanced from Lestrade to Sherlock, nervously.

Molly stood up. She walked to the bed and sat down next to Marie.

“You gave her a chance,” Molly said, holding back her tears. “She could have made it. But she didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know how to get to a hospital, she just…blundered toward the river and stole a boat and…”

“Hackney,” Sherlock rasped.

“I’m sorry?” Gregson said.

“Hackney,” Sherlock repeated. “The farmer’s market. Sophia knew what they had planned for her and for Ryder. Maybe she overheard something or who knows, maybe Kemp told her about it. It would absolutely be like him. Sophia’s not thinking about saving her _own_ life. She’s only thinking that if nobody warns Ryder, she’ll turn up at the rendezvous point with the carbuncle and Kemp and Latimer will kill her. The one idea in her head is to reach the market before dawn. Ryder’s family will be there. Someone, George or Jeanie, can get a message to Ryder. She knows she has to go west and then north. That’s what she tries to do. And then the hallucinations begin. And she is lost.”

Molly put an arm around Marie’s slumped shoulders.

“But she wasn’t alone,” Molly said, and it was no good now trying to hold back the tears, especially when she looked at Lestrade and saw in his face his memory of that morning down in the morgue. “She was not…totally…alone. You helped her. You gave her the strength to try, you let her believe for a little longer that she might get to see Ryder again. I wish she had made it,” Molly wept. “I wish she had, but…as a place to…my garden, Marie, it was full of hyacinths. They were…Harry said they were her favorite. She died there. She died there, instead of in that terrible house, because of you.”

Marie looked up at her, with infinite sadness.

“You are very kind to an old woman, Molly Hooper,” she said. “May you be rewarded.”

Suddenly Marie clutched Molly to her. They hung onto each other, both crying. Over Marie’s shoulder, Molly could see Sherlock. He was on his feet, breathing a little hard, looking this way and that as if he were lost and looking for a sign. His hands opened and closed, fingers flexing, fingers curling into fists.

She saw John go near him, bend his head toward Sherlock’s, whisper something. Sherlock’s head shook, briefly, like a cat’s throwing off water. She saw his mouth say _No. It’s just. Too many people in the room._

John touched, with great care and tenderness, the end of the scarf draped around Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock swayed slightly, looked down at the hand, covered it briefly with his own.

Molly looked away.

Marie released her. She began collecting tissues. Gregson looked around the room, then glanced at Lestrade.

“Are they all like this?” he said, in what he thought was an inaudible whisper. “The cases Sherlock Holmes works on?”

“Not always,” Lestrade replied. “At least, not always quite so much.”

*             *             *

The floodlights switched off, one by one. Darkness began to fall again on the rocky slope leading down to the bridge, beneath which a man’s body no longer drifted. They had packed the corpse off in its bag. Harry’s Honda stood forlornly by the edge of the road, all the doors flapping open, rifled and rolled by Anderson and the evidence team. They too had gone. The last few uniformed officers were getting into their cars.

Sergeant Donovan finally folded up he notebook, rose from the camp chair she’d been sitting in, and said, “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Watson. You’re free to go.”

Harry got up, with great difficulty, from the boulder she had been sitting on for the past, well, it seemed like a year.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Hips, knees, ankles, they were all stiff. She lurched slowly toward the car.

“Are you sure you’re all right to drive?” Donovan asked, after a moment. “We can run you back home.”

Harry did not feel like accepting hospitality from Sergeant Donovan at this time.

“I’m good, thanks,” Harry said. “I’ve had plenty of time to decompress.”

Harry shut the rear doors, the passenger door, and was about to duck in when she heard Donovan call her name.

“Yes, what is it?” Harry called, across the noisy darkness that separated their two cars.

“You be careful,” was what Donovan finally said. “You know your brother’s not the only assistant Sherlock Holmes has ever had. He’s just the first to survive.”

Harry was too tired even to feel angry.

“I appreciate your concern, Sergeant,” she said. “Good night.”

Harry slid gratefully into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut.

Before this, Harry hadn’t minded Donovan as much as the boys did. During the brief period when she was the prime suspect in Clara’s murder, Donovan had been playing good cop most of the time. She was tough, of course, as a woman in her job would have to be; hard, of course, for the same reasons. The only problem, and it was a great pity, was that Donovan still believed that Sherlock Holmes was a psychopath.

Ah well, Harry thought. It’s understandable. She doesn’t know about the Vortex.

Off through the darkness back toward home and thinking about how, if she had the opportunity, she could explain to Donovan about the Vortex in terms she would understand. You see it’s not that he does all these terrible bizarre things, it’s just that somehow the universe funnels them toward him. It’s just fate making sure that Sherlock gets to do what he was born to do.

It was possible. She was thinking about it like an argument, working up in the back of her mind a little opening statement. Weighing different little turns of phrase, deciding between rhetorical points. Harry rarely got to go to court but she did love it, being in trial, and when you won there was nothing quite like the rush.

She was enjoying her imaginary argument. Enjoying it so much that she didn’t notice the shadow cast in her rearview mirror, or the hand reaching out from the seat behind her.

END CHAPTER V, PART 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Marie.
> 
> I can't remember exactly where I had the idea of making Marie Sherlock's nanny. You have a lot of ideas when you're first thinking about the story and you sort of know when you've found the right one. I came up first with the idea of her being someone who had known Sherlock's father, and then the nanny thing suggested itself, and I thought, this has the potential to be really funny and really emotional at the same time. WE HAVE A WINNER!
> 
> I love Marie's voice. I used to enjoy just letting her sort of monologue in my head. From a characterization point of view, Marie partly explains why Sherlock is so different from Mycroft, and she also gives John some hope for the future because she shows that the young Sherlock did learn how to form an attachment to another human being--something you could not necessarily infer from his relationship with Mycroft. I also like to think, in the canon in my head, that Sherlock actually learned how to do that thing he does from Marie. In the ACD stories people often comment on how magical Holmes's skills are and he often gets called a wizard, etc. He then always explained it; but if he didn't, he'd probably be able to convince peopel to start a religion based on him. Indeed, one might say that in some ways he has.
> 
> It also helps to have a new source of humor enter the story at this point, because from here on in it just gets darker. "Blue Carbuncle" is one of the happiest stories in the canon; "Greek Interpreter" is one of the darkest. Naturally I put them together. Naturally what happens is a little scary. But although Marie is good comic relief, she's also someone with some authority who can help the young'uns deal with the forces that have been unleashed here. Anyway, I had fun inventing her, and I'll miss her.


	6. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID--PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started adding illustrations. There are two at the end of this chapter. They're spoilers, so read the chapter first.

It was always a relief to Sherlock once a room cleared; but John was, for once, just as glad when the nurse came to haul Lestrade out for some tests. Molly followed Lestrade. Gregson went over his list of questions, then took his leave with an almost formal courtesy that caught Sherlock rather off guard. It was, at last, just the two of them and Marie, drinking water and composing herself in patience as she waited to be discharged. John had withdrawn to another corner on the pretext of calling Harry, in case Sherlock and Marie wanted to talk. But Sherlock said very little; and Harry wasn’t answering her mobile.

“Sherlock,” Marie finally said, “I think there is a little shop in this hospital. I have a great desire for a Greek yogurt. Would you mind?”

Sherlock glanced at her, then at John.

“Yes, it is true I want five minutes’ conversation alone with your friend,” said Marie cheerfully. “But it would be good to have something in my stomach. I think it has never been so empty.”

Sherlock sighed, went to the door, passed through it, then stuck his head back in through the doorway.

“Don’t believe anything she says about me,” Sherlock said.

“No fear,” John replied, waving him on.

With great misgivings, Sherlock finally closed the door.

“Now,” said Marie. “Regarding Sherlock’s faith in unconditional love.”

“Please—let’s not—“ John said, casting desperately about for a way to change the subject.

“I saw your face when he said it, Doctor. Please know that remark was meant for me only. He forgot for a moment that you were in the room.”

“Yes,” John muttered. “He does that.”

“Less often now than formerly, perhaps,” said Marie, with a look that was just as embarrassing as a wink would have been. “You wonder why Mycroft and I are shall we say associates, while Sherlock has not mentioned me once in all the years you have known him.”

“You really are clairvoyant,” John said, resigning himself to an extremely awkward five minutes.

“It is very simple,” said Marie. “Mycroft was never attached to me. Sherlock was.”

John waited for this simple thing to begin making sense.

“With Sherlock, one knows something lies beneath the surface,” Marie said, her eyes assuming a faraway look. “With Mycroft, not so, there is less than meets the eye. Their father, forget it. Pure psychopath. Seven years I made love to that man, and the last time I knew him no better than I did the first time.”

“But if you’re…clairvoyant…how could you not…” John stammered, because that was easier than saying, _Did you just say psychopath?_  

“Listen, Doctor, one does not become the wisest woman in Europe by lying in a bed of roses,” Marie said. “It was their father who released my powers and taught me to use them. Largely, alas, by nearly driving me mad. I will say this for psychopaths, they know exactly how to push your buttons, so as long as your happiness is useful to them they are very very good at maintaining it. It is once they have no further use for you, that is when you pass through the gates of hell.”

Marie clasped her hands in her lap. In the distance, John heard the low rumble of thunder. Thunder without rain. Heat lightning, you called that, only it wasn’t near hot enough. But the weather hadn’t been normal in England for years. Marie was right. Tomorrow would not be the same as today.

“Sherlock was seven years old when I ceased to be useful to his father,” Marie said. “I was young and passionate. There were terrible scenes. I left abruptly. I lost myself in London. I discerned my vocation and built up my practice. Many years later Mycroft found me, through what channels you can imagine. We began our informal association. Sherlock learned of this, of course. We met once, when he was still not yet twenty. It was not a success. We have had no contact since then. He is very, very angry. Because I left, and because I never said goodbye.”

“He must…by now…” John said, haltingly.

“Understand this,” Marie said sadly. “Their mother, she is a remarkable woman, a true genius. She loves them, yes, but her mind is usually elsewhere. Their father, I would not have you believe him evil. He has in fact a highly developed sense of right and wrong, it is just that his ethics are built of philosophy and not founded on the compassion one suffering mortal being feels for another, in which he does not believe in because he has never felt it himself. As regards human rights, justice, our responsibilities to non-human life on this planet, imperialism, economic inequality, and sundry other very important questions, he quite fearlessly upholds very fine and noble principles, sometimes at great cost to himself. He applied none of these principles to his marriage or to his affair with myself because to him sex is utterly insignificant except in the crudest physiological ways. I would, if I were a Christian, perhaps call him a saint. But it is just as well most saints do not have children.”

John could hear Harry’s voice. _He never laid a hand on us._

“Their mother loves them. Mycroft, even, loves Sherlock in the way that he can which I think you already know is rather peculiar. But. None of them knew how to care for another human being. Their father saw that I did, and that is why he seduced me. So that there would be someone in that house who knew how to care. And who would put up the things one had to put up with from those two children, for the pleasure of his beaux yeux. My God I was an idiot.”

The door handle moved. Sherlock came through, slowly, holding a plastic bag in one hand, his eyes darting from Marie to John.

Marie laughed. “Come in, Sherlock. We are not talking about you.”

Sherlock handed Marie the bag. While she began on the yogurt, Sherlock went into one of the pockets of the coat, which was hanging on the back of the door, and pulled out a small brick-shaped object wrapped in one of Harry’s good cloth napkins.

“As long as you’re here,” he said to Marie, “I thought you’d be interested in this. It falls more within your area of expertise than mine.”

He tossed the object onto Marie’s bed as if it were an empty plastic cup. As if he had not gathered those cards carefully from Harry’s bedspread and floor and wrapped them up and stowed them in one of those bottomless pockets before heading out on their night of insanity. As if he had not revealed, earlier that day, a knowledge of Tarot that was at least as good as Harry’s. As none of this clairvoyant stuff could possibly ever have mattered to him.

Sherlock went to sit on the windowsill, kicking his heels but watching intently. Marie fanned the cards out, caressing them with her fingertips. “These are strange cards, Sherlock. Some of these images I have not seen since I left Greece. Whose are they?”

Sherlock looked down on her from his lofty perch. “Don’t you know? Can’t you feel the owner’s _energy_?”

“I have been nearly smothered and poisoned today, Sherlock, please do not add to these injuries any more of your precisely calibrated insults.”

Watching Marie touch the cards made John think, guiltily, of Harry.

John called her number again. It rang. No answer.

“What’s that one?” he heard Sherlock say.

“The Phoenician?” Marie answered. “You know the Punic wars? Rome versus Carthage. The Phoenicians came from Carthage. Modern-day Tunis. Home of that little giggling bastard Kemp. Fantastic sailors. You see, he has drowned, the bones are picked clean, the eyes are like pearls. It looks like death but it foretells change. Metamorphosis.”

They went on in the background. John tried to listen, but he couldn’t. He was worrying now.

“John,” Sherlock called. “Show Marie the pictures on your mobile.”

“Later, Sherlock. I’m trying to reach Harry.”

“That’s the fourth attempt you’ve made since I returned. Obviously she doesn’t want to talk to either of us. I think even you can deduce the reason.”

Sherlock let out a yelp of exasperation as John pressed the button again.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

“Hello, John.”

John hadn’t known how worried he was until he heard Harry’s voice. It sounded a little flat, but no doubt she was exhausted after her ordeal.

“Harry. What happened? How’d you make out with Donovan?”

“I’m all right,” Harry replied.

That was all. No _please do not put those words in that order ever again_ , no _you better believe you will pay for this night’s work_ , no _put that bastard on the phone I have words for him._

“Where are you?” John said, uneasily. “Did Donovan release your car? Do you need someone to collect you?”

There was a long pause.

“I’m fine, John,” she said, as tonelessly as before. “I just…it’s all got to be a little too much for me. I need to be on my own for a little while. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me.”

John pressed the speaker button.

“On your own?” John demanded. “You mean you’re leaving town?”

“Maybe,” Harry said. On speaker her voice sounded even more mechanical. Underneath there was a kind of whooshing sound that almost reminded him of a respirator. “I kind of thought about going to Coventry, actually. Like when we were children.”

Sherlock leapt off the windowsill. He stalked toward the phone in John’s hand. Marie watched from the bed.

“Coventry?” John said.  

“Or not,” Harry sighed. “I don’t know. This whole day and night has been completely mad and I’m really only dealing with half a deck right now.”

Another pause.

“I should go,” Harry said. “Thanks for calling. Take care.”

The CALL ENDED icon came up.

Sherlock had not actually moved. But John could feel the shift. He was tense, vibrating, seething with energy, beginning to talk to himself in low and anxious tones.

“Traffic sounds, regular, constant, not city traffic, that’s a motorway, she’s in a car and they’re headed out of the city…”

“They,” said Marie. “She is not alone or free to speak. I thought not.”

John couldn’t answer her. The only thing his mind would give him, when he asked it for words, was that image of Sophia eating nightshade with both hands.

“But what direction?” Sherlock was hissing, as he closed his eyes and tried to return to the memorized sound of Harry’s call. “Where are they _taking_ her?”

“Not to Coventry?” Marie said, tentatively.

“No!”

John and Sherlock shouted it at the same time. John looked at Sherlock. He wondered exactly how much Sherlock had deduced from Harry’s reference in the car.  

“Coventry was a code word, Marie.” Sherlock tossed the explanation in Marie’s direction without looking back at her. His eyes were bent on John’s face and the pupils seemed to have engulfed the irises. “Harry meant that she is in someone else’s power but who, who, who, there are no fewer than four suspects roaming about and they’ve got at least one firearm…”

Marie, seeing that John was perhaps about to scream, cut in. “What did she mean, only dealing with half a deck?”

John finally got his voice working. “Not dealing with a full deck, deck of cards she means, it’s a figure of speech, it’s like not the full shilling or having a slate off, it’s American I think, she and Clara used to watch these terrible American night-time soaps…”

“But that’s not what Harry said,” Sherlock said, as one hand shot out toward John. “She said _I’m only dealing with half a deck._ ”

Sherlock’s hands flew to his temples as the answer came to him.

“Tarot,” he cried. “The _Rider-Waite_ Tarot. Half a deck. It’s Ryder, John,” Sherlock nearly shouted, seizing John by the shoulders and giving him a little shake. “It’s Ryder. _She’s with Ryder_.”

Relief burst out of all three of them. Sherlock guided John over to a chair, into which John sagged with a loud sigh.

“This is good,” Sherlock muttered to himself, as he began to walk the room. “Ryder is good. Ryder is perfect.”

“Perfect?” John demanded.

“So much better than it could have been,” Sherlock rattled on. “It’s not Kemp, it’s not the mysterious American, it’s not Irene Adler, it’s _just_ Ryder, she said _only._ Harry must have told Ryder to let her answer or you’d know there was something wrong of _course_ it’s Ryder, none of the others would fall for that, _yes!_ ” Sherlock punched the air. “Ryder alone. Perfect.”

Marie, who had pushed herself to the edge of the bed, said, “It seems you are fond of this Harry.”

“John is fond of Harry,” Sherlock snapped. “I am fond of not being strangled in the dead of night by her pathologically loyal brother.”

“I’ll show you pathology,” John roared, lunging at Sherlock.

Sherlock stepped out of range without turning a hair. John was left glaring at him, feeling stupid and out of control. Pathologically loyal. That miserable fucker. Sherlock didn’t mind how pathological it was when he was the one benefiting, did he.

“Behold the fruits of caring,” Sherlock said. “Now sit down and shut up while I _think_.”

John swung around toward the door. As he reached the handle, Marie said, “Please, Doctor. Do not go. Three heads are better than two.”

Sherlock was in mid-flight when John finally turned around. “Distractions. Shooting, drowning, gassing, poisoning all incidental all unrolling after the fact the fact being the theft by Sophia and Ryder of a blue carbuncle stolen by Kemp, Latimer, and our American cousin. Initial questions still unanswered. If we want to know where Ryder’s taking Harry we need to know why she put the stone in the chicken or no! Even more important! _Why steal the stone at all?_ ”

Lighting seemed to have struck Sherlock. But all John could do was say, after an awkward pause, “Because it’s worth half a million pounds?”

“ _No,_ John!” Sherlock cried. “No! That is exactly _not_ why. If it were Irene Adler that would be your answer but we are dealing here with two very young, very impractical women who can’t imagine why people make money instead of love. Sophia’s the one who was intimate with Latimer, she’s the one who must have taken it, and she gave it to Ryder but _why_? You couldn’t find me a woman in England who would be _less_ interested in jewelry than Ryder Kingfisher.”

“Harry Watson,” John said.

Sherlock began that little hiss of annoyance. Then he stopped. Something new had come to him.

“You remember what I said to you that time about your not being brilliant yourself but being a wonderful conductor of luminosity in others,” Sherlock said, with almost a smile.

“Yes,” John replied, remembering that horrible night in that nasty inn near Baskerville.

“This is exactly what I meant,” Sherlock said. “Your feeble repartee has catalyzed a revelation. Why, indeed, has Ryder chosen to carjack Harry Watson, the one woman on earth who shares Harry’s feelings about precious jewels? The woman who gave _up_ a jewel worth half a million pounds on the off chance that it might save the life of a woman she wasn’t even sure existed? The woman who risked a bullet to stop Ryder from sacrificing herself for a woman who was already dead?”

Sherlock waited. John stared back at him, unhelpfully.

 “Ryder isn’t trying to _hurt_ Harry, John,” Sherlock finally said. “She wants Harry’s _help._ ”

“Funny way of asking for it,” John snapped.

“Of course Harry wouldn’t help her _voluntarily_ ,” Sherlock said. “Hence the use of force. But Sophia gave that stone to Ryder because Ryder needed to _do something with it._ Ryder was prevented the first time, undoubtedly by her mother. Now Ryder is a thousand times more driven to accomplish that task so that Sophia won’t have died in vain. Whatever this is, Ryder needs Harry’s help to do it. To find out where Ryder’s taking Harry all we have to do is work out _what she needs the stone to do._ ”

Sherlock’s eye fell on cards spread out on the hospital bed.

He snapped his fingers. “Mobile, John. Pull up the pictures you took of the tarot cards on Harry’s bed.”

John rushed over to the bed. Marie looked at the photos and began moving the cards into position.

“Standard Celtic Cross layout, typical for a novice.” Evidently Marie also thought out loud when she was in a hurry. Maybe Sherlock had picked that up from her. “In position one we have…the ace of pentacles. This is the basic situation, and that card is entirely appropriate, the pentacle represents wealth and of course this blue carbuncle, there is only one.”

“So appropriate one might suspect Ryder of having selected it herself,” Sherlock murmured.

“Possibly,” Marie replied, with a shrug. “Sometimes the querent chooses the first card. I think it leads to distortion myself; but at any rate, here is the crossing card.”

Marie put down The Phoenician.

“Also sadly appropriate,” Marie sighed. “Literally of course the Phoenician in the case is Kemp; but if we let go of that for a moment it suggests that Ryder is confronted in this matter by the necessity for change. That there is some transformation she fears and resists, connected to this matter.”

Marie kept placing cards. John looked back to Sherlock’s eyes. They seemed somehow unnaturally bright.

“You believe in this,” John said.

“No, John,” Sherlock insisted. “But _Ryder does._ She was blocked in her quest, she asked for guidance, and what she got was a series of randomly chosen archetypal images out of which she would then have built a narrative which suggested to her a course of action. _That’s_ what we’re looking for. If we can look at these cards the way Ryder looked at them we will find out what Ryder thinks she needs to do.”

John looked back at the bedspread. His eyes were held by the image on the card just to the left of the cross made by the first two.

A man, who had been lying on something that could either be a bed or a slab of marble, sitting up with his head in his hands. Behind him, on a black background, nine long and naked swords.

Marie noticed John’s interest. “This is the nine of swords, Doctor,” she said. “This is the position that represents the root of the matter. The things that brought the querent to this point, the circumstances that put her in the position of asking this question.”

John’s eyes traveled over to the card on the right. “And this represents the near future.”

All three of them looked down at the fourth card. John recognized it immediately. He had seen it often in the readings Harry used to do. A red heart, absurdly like a greeting card valentine, pierced with three swords, buffeted by rain and thunder.

They all looked at it for a moment.

“Now that is creepy,” John said.

“Get a grip, John,” Sherlock said. “It’s all in your mind. It always is. Knowing the outcome, _we_ interpret the symbols according to that narrative and of course they all seem like precise and accurate omens of doom. Ryder didn’t want to believe she would lose Sophia so she would have interpreted this card differently. _She_ would have thought this means she has a little more heartbreak to get through before…”

Sherlock’s eyes traveled to the card just above the cross. It showed a man standing among hills, three long staves stuck into the ground around him, looking across what might be a river at mountains in the distance.

“The desired outcome,” Marie said. “Strange. You see he is looking far into the future. Traditionally this figure stands for planning, foresight, seeing moves ahead…”

“The very attributes with which Ryder is so scantily furnished,” Sherlock said. “What’s beneath?”

 Marie looked at the mobile again, pulled out another card, and laid it below the cross.

“It’s blank,” John said.

“Yes. It is blank,” Marie answered.

“Harry’s deck didn’t have a blank card,” John replied.

“No, Doctor,” Marie said. “Neither does mine. But in some traditions, on the Continent, there is one card that is never named aloud. It would be considered unlucky. I wonder if this is that card.”

John looked up at Sherlock.

“So it’s not a _good_ card, then,” John said.

“Death,” Sherlock answered. “That’s what it is—the card without a name.”

“Well. What about the seventh card, Marie, any cheer for us there?” John said, hopefully.

Marie consulted the mobile again, furrowed her brow, then found and put down another card.

It showed a fair-skinned woman with large, dark eyes dressed in a white robe seated on a shining golden throne. Her dark hair cascaded down her shoulders. The throne was perched at the top of a mountain that was just a mound of boulders, on which grew a kind of bramble with blue berries. In the background was more darkness, more thunder and lightning, more storms. The legend at the top read BELLADONNA.

“Ah, I have not seen you for a long time, my dear,” said Marie quietly. “Bella donna. The lady of the rocks. The lady of situations. Beautiful and powerful and touch her at your peril. The seventh position, that is the card that offers to the querent advice,” Marie said to John.

“The advice being?” he said.

Sherlock stood up and folded his arms. It was coming together, somewhere in that head.

“Irene Adler,” Sherlock said. “A lady of situations if there ever was one. Go to Irene Adler, ask for her help. That’s what that card in that position meant to Ryder Kingfisher. And that’s exactly what she did.”

Marie put another card into the chain.

“It’s the same card,” John said.

“No,” said Marie. “It looks similar. But this is the High Priestess, this is Rider-Waite standard. And it is the position that reveals to the querent the external influences on the situation.”

“An older woman with dark hair skilled in the magic arts,” Sherlock said, casting a glance at Marie.

Marie returned his glance with a rather cutting glare of her own, and slapped down another card.

“Hopes, fears, and the gods know what else come up in the ninth position,” Marie said. “And look what the card is.”

In the back of his mind John couldn’t quite squelch the sound of a crowd of American voices calling out _Wheel!....Of!...Fortune!_

“The Wheel,” Marie said. “Change of destiny, new directions, up with the down and down with the up. Hoped for and feared by our friend Ryder Kingfisher, well, we knew that, there is the Phoenician and his sea-change crossing her.”

John wasn’t looking at the Wheel. His eyes had gone back to the man on the bed with the eight swords behind him. The force from the past that had created the situation.

“Sherlock,” John said, slowly.

“John, we’re almost at the final outcome.”

“There’s only two men in this reading,” John said. “One there in the past,” he said, pointing at the eight of swords. “He’s…I don’t know what he’s supposed to portend. But just in the picture…he’s sick. He’s in bed, he’s alone, he’s crying or screaming or something and the whole room is full of weapons.”

Marie’s penetrating eyes turned to him. “You have been in that room yourself, Doctor, yes?”

“Leave him alone, Marie,” Sherlock warned.

John pointed up to the fifth card, the one representing the best case scenario. The man with three staves, staring out into the distance.

“And there he is,” John said. “Up on his feet.”

Sherlock’s hand fell on John’s shoulder and gripped it, hard. John felt his heartbeat skip.

“The father,” Sherlock whispered. “Ryder’s father. Ryder’s father was wounded in Afghanistan. A strange and awful and incurable wound. And what is it that makes that worthless piece of crystal the pearl of great price?” he cried. “It’s supposed to have _magical_ _healing powers_.”

Sherlock spun around, eyes lit, seeing a million solutions hanging in the air around him. John took in a sharp breath. He loved watching Sherlock at this moment. He had always loved it.

“Ryder believes in magic,” Sherlock shouted. “Sophia loves Ryder madly enough to believe in it too. She stole the carbuncle and gave it to Ryder so she could cure her father who has been wasting away in seclusion ever since he got back from Afghanistan because whatever’s wrong with him, the British Army does _not_ want the British public to know about it.”

John found himself hauled out of his chair and onto his feet by Sherlock, who had one hand clamped around each of John’s arms and, in his excitement, had nearly lifted him off the ground.

“O conductor of luminosity!” Sherlock exclaimed, into John’s bewildered face. “It’s always been the father. Ryder loved Sophia but she loves Daddy first last and always. Ryder’s taking that stone straight to her father. We find him, we find her.”

“Great!” John forced out. Sherlock’s grip rather hurt, but John’s bursting heart and singing blood didn’t care. “Where’s the father?”

“Kingfisher Farms,” Sherlock replied, finally letting him go. “That’s where Ryder took the stone when she first stole it, that must be where he is. There are two children in that family we haven’t met yet, who evidently don’t come down for the market. They must stay back at the farm to keep an eye on dear old Dad, because he needs either constant care or constant surveillance or both. That’s where Ryder’s going now, out to the back end of nowhere in the middle of the night, and that is why she needs Harry because _Harry has a car.”_

Sherlock began gathering up their things.

“We need a car and we need to get moving _now_ ,” he called out.

“We need the police,” John shouted back.

Sherlock spun around, fixing John with that electric stare. “John, Harry is driving flat-out on a major motorway, probably with a gun being held to her head by a woman who at the best of times never sailed on an even keel and is, right now, insane with grief. You’ve seen what driving does to Harry even when she’s not under duress. What happens if London’s finest turn what right now is an unfortunate but manageable predicament into a full-blown hostage situation or, what all police love even more than that, the good old high-speed chase?”

John couldn’t articulate the answer that came to him. It was Marie, looking at John’s face, who said, “Go. Go alone. But. Not before we know the final outcome.”

Marie looked back at John’s mobile.

She started paging through all the photos.

“The final outcome,” she said. “It is not there. That card is not there. There is nothing in that position.”

“Maybe she was interrupted,” John said.

“No, no,” Sherlock said, rushing over to look at the mobile. “When Harry found her she was in the bathroom trying out hair products. Ryder definitely finished that reading. If the card’s not there it’s because she took it with her.”

Marie grabbed the rest of the deck and began fanning it out on the spread.

“What are you doing?” John said.

“Counting the cards,” Marie replied, as her fingers traveled over them. “The one that is missing, that is the one she took, that must have been the final outcome. Wands, cups, swords, pentacles, all present and correct…oh, the major arcana in this cursed deck, I do not even know how what they all are or how many…”

John and Sherlock hung there in an agony of suspense, watching Marie’s eyes flick from one card to the next.

“The Hanged Man!” she shouted. “I cannot find it. Tarot without the Hanged Man is like _Hamlet_ without the Prince of Denmark. That deck must have one, but it is gone. There is your final outcome.”

“Right!” Sherlock shouted, struggling into his coat. “Give John the mobile, Marie. You take charge of the cards.”

Marie handed John’s phone back to him. “Sacrifice,” she said. “That is the Hanged Man. The willing sacrifice. The one who gives up everything to gain something else.”

Before John could ask her what that meant in practical terms, Sherlock swooped down onto the bed next to Marie, like an enormous raven perching on a ledge.

“Marie,” he said, turning to her. “Thank you.”

Marie looked back at him, with the beginning of a smile.

Sherlock kissed her, once, on the top of her head.

While John blinked in amazement, Sherlock exploded off the hospital bed, all motion and energy.

“To Kingfisher Farms, John!” he shouted. “The hunt is on!”

They burst out the door and went flying down the corridor. They’d have to find a car somewhere. But that was a detail. Who cared for details. John was burning with hope and joy. They had the solution, they would soon have a car, they would get Harry back. The bringer of fire and the conductor of light. Together they could do anything.

*             *             *

Harry stared into the little tunnel of light carved out by her moving headlamps. It seemed pitifully small, and shuddered at the edges as if threatening to dissolve. The barrel of the revolver was still pressed against the back of her head, though she no longer felt it unless she tried to. Her neck was stiff as a board, her shoulders were crying out in pain, and her hands were clenched on the wheel as if she were flying a single-prop plane through a hurricane.

And as close to madness as Harry was, she had the distinct sense that Ryder was much closer.

“Take the next turn-off,” Ryder said.

Harry put on the indicator. They were headed east. That was about all the information her brain could process at this time. Captured _again._ By a twenty year old who was both shorter and lighter than Harry was. Sherlock would kick her right out of the TARDIS this time.

Fine with me, Harry thought. Just as long as they find me.

She was pretty sure John had got the message. Neither of them used the word Coventry lightly.

“You’re Harry Watson,” said Ryder.

“Yes,” Harry answered, as calmly as she could.

“I’ve read about you.”

Harry suppressed a sigh. John had, of course, pulled out all the stops for the one about Sherlock’s Amazing Return. Harry could hardly recognize herself under all the drama and the suspense and the heroism that she had certainly not felt at any point during what John kept referring to as The Adventure of the Empty Houses. She had been terrified from the moment she set foot in that first house. She was terrified now. And yet, so far, she had managed not to either crash the car into a tree or get herself shot.

“You should take John’s stories with a grain of salt. He wants people to be better than they really are.”

The darkness rushed by them, broken now and then by the traveling light of a car going the opposite way.

“How did Sophia die?” Ryder said.

She was trying to keep her voice level but it wasn’t working. The more upset Ryder got, the more likely that gun was to go off, either intentionally or accidentally.

Harry took in a long, careful breath.

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“I do.” And, in a slightly higher pitch, “I can’t bear not knowing.”

If Harry gripped that wheel any tighter she was going to lose feeling in both her hands.

Willing herself to relax her fingers, Harry said, very calmly, “Put the gun down and I’ll tell you.”

The barrel pressed harder against the back of her skull.

“Put the gun down,” Harry repeated, slowly. “I promise you I’ll keep driving. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. But if I tell you this story while you’re holding that gun where it is right now you’ll pull that trigger without even meaning to and then we will both die.”

The ring of metal pressed into Harry’s scalp began to wobble a little.

“How do I know you’ll keep your promise?” Ryder said.

“Because I don’t want to be shot.”

Harry could hear Ryder’s breathing. It wasn’t even.

The ring of pressure lifted.

Harry glanced into the mirror. She saw the gun travel through the space behind her and heard it come to rest on the back seat.

“Tell me.”

Ryder was trying so hard to be frightening. And the harder Ryder tried, the stronger Harry could smell it: her fear, her pain, and her terrible loneliness.

“I don’t know how,” Harry said. “But at some point on Friday night, Sophia escaped. She got away from them; but she’d already been poisoned. She ran halfway across London, and then the symptoms started. She died alone, in my client’s garden, surrounded by hyacinths.”

For a long time there was no sound from the back seat, apart from ragged breathing. Then came a dry choking noise. Harry knew that sound. It was the sound of a miserable young woman desperately trying to swallow her own sobs.

Harry looked up into the mirror. Ryder was looking back into it. Her lips were pressed tight  together, but her whole chin was quivering, and her eyelids were red.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Harry said, quietly. “Just cry.”

The choking sounds got louder, and closer together.

“Just cry,” Harry repeated. “It won’t hurt anyone. There’s no one here to be strong for.”

One of the sobs escaped.

“I won’t hurt you,” Harry said, and mad as it sounded she knew it was true. “I won’t make a break for it while your guard is lowered. I promise I will take you where you need to go. Just please. Let yourself cry.”

The scream that burst out of Ryder with the tears made Harry’s hands tighten on the wheel. The gun rattled from the rear seat onto the floor of the car. Ryder curled into a ball, howling like a dying animal. Agony streamed out of Ryder in every direction. Harry kept driving, with her jaw clenched shut and her eyes stinging and her own throat constricting in sympathy.

*             *             *

Molly surely knew by now, Lestrade thought, that he had not been exaggerating his hatred of hospitals. They had forced him to make a follow-up appointment before discharging him, but he swore to himself—and he thought Molly might actually have read that on his face—that once he left this place, only an ambulance would get him back into it. She didn’t seem to mind. She just took his arm, got into the lift with him, and looked up at him with a smile that seemed to say, _it’s all right, I make house calls._

He kissed her, right there in the elevator, because of that look. It was lovely. And when the doors rather unexpectedly opened to let Tobias Gregson on, Molly only let out a very little squeak.

“Greg,” Gregson said, nodding at him as if he had seen nothing. Possibly he hadn’t. Gregson was young, full of ambition and intensity, and once he got focused on a case he didn’t notice too much that wasn’t directly related to it. “Glad I caught you. Do you have a minute?”

“You found something,” Greg said.

The lift doors opened with a chime. Gregson backed out, still talking to Lestrade as he and Molly followed.

“Well, as to what I’m actually looking for, no luck so far,” said Gregson. “I mean there is a slip on Cadogan Pier that belongs to that Friar’s Mead property but there’s no boat there now. We did dig up some images of Kemp, so those are circulating everywhere along with his vital statistics. Pity you didn’t get a look at the man who hit you.”

“Yes,” Lestrade said grimly. “I would very much like, someday, to have a look at him.”

“So all the people who run things down are running all that down,” Gregson said. “But I am not good at sitting and waiting, you know that. So I followed up the family angle, and at last I have a lead on the mysterious Albert Kingfisher.”

Gregson waved the tablet at them.

“Dr. Watson said he’d looked in the military databases, well, he’s right, there’s nothing there. So I tried Missing Persons.”

“Better you than me,” Lestrade said.

“Ah, it’s not like it was when you were coming up,” Gregson said. “It’s…mostly searchable, now. Anyway, three years ago there was a report made by a Sergeant Dodd who served in the same regiment with Kingfisher in Afghanistan. Dodd got discharged in 2007 and he got round to trying to look up his old chum and found he couldn’t establish contact. Contacted his wife; she never replied. Kept contacting her; no answer. Finally made a visit to Kingfisher Farms and spoke to the wife in person. She told him Kingfisher had gone off to London to see a specialist. Dodd found out the doctor’s name she’d given him was a fake, and he went right off to the police to file his report.”

They had now reached the main lobby. Lestrade could smell freedom every time the sliding doors opened to admit some new unfortunate; but Gregson was still rambling at him, and with Molly there he didn’t want to look churlish by telling him to sod off and leave them alone.

“So what happened then?” Lestrade said, planting himself rather pointedly near the sliding doors.

“Well there was no follow-up. Dodd wasn’t a family member, claimed no relation other than old army chum, I think the officer must have thought Kingfisher was deliberately avoiding him. But then Dodd got himself arrested in Essex.”

Lestrade finally sat down on one of the benches near the door. Molly perched next to him. Gregson was so full of excitement that he evidently could not bear to settle.

“Really,”Lestrade said.

Gregson needed no further urging. “In 2008, Dodd went back to Kingfisher Farms unannounced—as he put it, to do a little recon. Noticed the house had an extension recently built, connected to it by a little hallway. No windows, and the curtains were drawn in the extension, but he did see lights going on and off in there. So he waits till nightfall, then goes up to the window and taps on it. No response. Finally he yells out Kingfisher’s name, saying it’s Dodd come to see is he all right. A hand puts aside the curtain…”

Molly looked up, thinking Gregson was pausing dramatically; but he was only scrolling to the next page of the report.

“And what Dodd says was, he saw the face of his old friend, but it wasn’t like him at all. Says he was deadly pale. Eyes had a kind of dead-fish look. Dodd was so startled he jumped back from the window. Curtain drops. Dodd beats a path to the front door of the house, bangs on it. Wife answers. Dodd demands to be let in to speak to his old friend. She refuses. He accuses her of neglect, mistreatment, murder by inches, things get pretty warm. She ends up calling the police to have him removed from the property.”

Lestrade waited.

“That’s all,” Gregson said. “No follow-up. Charges dropped, Dodd goes home, and the police do nothing.”

Lestrade rubbed his forehead. He was so damn tired. And yet, he still couldn’t stop himself from caring.

“So do you think I should go and see the local police?” Gregson said.

“Yes. No,” Lestrade said, suddenly thinking better of it. “Whatever’s going on, the local police must know about it. In a town like that there are no secrets except from outsiders. If you interview them they’ll only put you off.”

“So what then?” Gregson said. “Talk to this Dodd?”

“You’ll only get another version of what’s in the report.”

“So what should I do? What would _Sherlock Holmes_ do?”

Lestrade sighed.

“Sherlock would take John out there under cover of darkness and break into the place,” Lestrade said. “And that, by the way, is why you as an officer of the law should never ask yourself that question.”

“All right then,” Gregson said. “I can interview the mother.”

“That’s a better idea.”

“Thanks, Greg,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I turn up.”

“What…you’re going _now_?” Lestrade cried, as he began walking away.

“Strike while the iron is hot,” Gregson called back.

Greg darted through the doors, happy to have a quest to pursue. Lestrade stood up, stretched, and took the arm Molly offered.

“I appreciate it, Molly,” Lestrade said. “Not as resilient as I used to be.”

“I think not being dead makes you quite resilient enough,” Molly said. “Look, we’ll just go straight home, my car’s parked right on the street.”

Lestrade caught the little hesitation on the word “home.” Neither of them really wanted to say the words _your place or mine?_

He was still trying to think of tactful ways to put the question when Molly stopped in front of an empty parking space. She stepped into it, turning round and round, her lips moving.

“Molly?” Lestrade said.

“It was here,” Molly answered. “I left my car right here. I’m sure I did. But it’s not…and I locked it…who would steal my car? It was never valuable and now it’s not even new. Who in the world would just…from in front of a hospital, too?”

Lestrade looked at the empty space. Molly looked at it too.

They said it together.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

*             *             *

“Are you _sure_ this will be all right?” John said, for the third time.

Sherlock braced himself against the door as John hauled Molly’s ancient Fiat around to the left. He was doing his best to look out for police cars, but he could not stop himself from speeding. The euphoria of hearing Sherlock almost sort of say something nice about him had worn off, and anxiety began to reassert itself.

“Molly gave me spare keys to everything when she was hiding me after…the fall,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock extracted the mobile from John’s pocket and began manipulating it.

“Who are you texting?” John said.

“Homeless network,” he answered. “It occurred to me that even if _De Gemmarum Mirandorum_ is a forgery, it’s still most likely where Ryder got her ideas about the blue carbuncle’s magic properties. We should have an English translation of it. My Latin is rusty, and it would be useful to know how this stone is supposed to do its healing work.”

“But how many homeless Latin scholars can there be?” John asked.

“You’d be surprised,” Sherlock answered grimly.

Sherlock sent his text and subsided into silence. On they went, rocketing along the motorway. Alone together at last. Just John, and Sherlock, and a whole living room full of elephants.

“So,” John began.

“Don’t,” Sherlock barked. “I don’t want to talk about Marie. Ever.”

“Right,” John bit off.

More silence.

“What’s Coventry, John?”

John’s stomach contracted as if it had been punched.

“Obviously you know.”

“Obviously your father’s system of discipline involved a literalization of the old military expression ‘to be sent to Coventry,’ meaning to be isolated and ostracized as a punishment for some kind of transgression. But you said yourself, the devil is in the day to day.”

Someone has to break the ice, John told himself, before we walk into God knows what kind of situation. And it will have to be me, won’t it.

“The Coventry Protocol applied from the time you were five years old,” John said, staring into the darkness. “That was when Dad thought you reached the age of reason.”

Sherlock snorted. “Ninety percent of British adults die without reaching the age of reason.”

“Yes, well,” John replied. “After five, if you did something _really_ bad, Dad would put you in Coventry. How long depended on what you’d done.”

His throat closed up for a moment.

“And what was Coventry like, John?”

John swallowed.

“Nobody in the family was allowed to speak to you,” John said. “Mum was allowed to make us food and do all the things, you know. But when you were in Coventry she couldn’t speak to you. Or…or touch you. Nobody could. Everyone had to pretend that they couldn’t see or hear you. It was like being a ghost.”

It was worse. He couldn’t put it into words. Being looked _through_ like that—by Dad, but also by Mum. And Mum would cry while she was looking through you; but she still wouldn’t see you. Whatever it was you’d done, it started to seem like an unforgivable sin. And you started to think maybe you were so bad that good people really couldn’t see you.

Sherlock looked out the window into the darkness.

“But that wasn’t all,” Sherlock murmured.

John waited for the lump in his throat to dissolve. It didn’t.

“Harry got put through it first, of course,” John said. “But then I turned five. First time Dad put me in Coventry, Harry wouldn’t observe it. She went right on talking to me. So Dad sent _her_ to Coventry. That happened every time. He’d send me to Coventry, she’d refuse to honor it, she’d get sent to Coventry. So then one time I got sent to Coventry, Dad told Harry she had to stay in her room, from now on, until my sentence was up.”

Sherlock looked at him.

“They took her meals in, you know,” John said, nervously. “And she could go out of doors and all. Just…when she was at home, she had to be in her room.”

He desperately wanted to end the story there. But from the way Sherlock folded his arms and settled into the seat, it was obvious he knew there was more.

“But,” Sherlock finally said, “Harry refused to stay in her room.”

John shook his head.

“So then what?”

John found he couldn’t tell any more of the story. But then he wouldn’t need to.

“So your father tried bribes and punishments,” Sherlock said, tonelessly. “That failed. And then he tried locking her in.”

John’s eyes began to sting.

“Harry found ways to escape. Your father found ways of preventing her. This pattern of escalation continued until your father realized that there was no way to force her to honor the Coventry Protocol without resorting to the physical force which the Coventry Protocol was supposed to render unnecessary.”

John nodded.

The thunder seemed to be getting closer. Maybe they were driving toward it.

“So he no longer sent you to Coventry. But he still sent Harry there.”

John didn’t answer. Sherlock would read the silence as confirmation. He always did.

“And you complied with the protocol,” Sherlock said, keeping his tone neutral.

John shook his head.

“I’d sneak into her room at night, when they were asleep. I remember that so vividly. Just talking in her room, under the covers, whispering, with maybe a little pocket torch. She read to me, before I could read on my own.”

“But you didn’t openly defy your father.”

“Oh no,” John said. “You didn’t do _that_.”

When the silence from Sherlock’s corner became unbearable, John said, “Harry got the worst of it. But it was because she wouldn’t give in. She couldn’t see that it only ever made things worse. If she could just have done what he told her to—“

“Oh really, John, you’re a doctor, you know how abuse works—“

“He never laid a hand on us!”

John was grateful to the thunder for filling up the silence that followed.

“It’s always easy when they’re someone else’s issues,” John snapped. “I don’t go on about your _massive_ abandonment complex, do I?”

“I do not have complexes,” Sherlock sniffed.

“Oh of course not. I suppose those are only for ordinary people.”

“Stop it.”

“Oh, it all makes sense now,” John ranted on, gripping the wheel tighter. “You’ve been testing me since the day I met you. He acts like he’s my friend, but can I trust him? Everyone who cares walks out in the end.”

“Shut up, John.” Sherlock’s voice was rising.

“What if I’m a dick to him? Will he leave then? What if I lie to him? Will that make him leave? What if I test a chemical weapon on him? What if I _die_ , will _that_ be enough to make him leave me?”

Sherlock was twisted away from John, trying to burrow into the back of the seat.

“Well learn it now, Sherlock!” John shouted. “No, no, no, and no! The answer will _always be no!_ You can stop fucking testing me, Sherlock, because the answer is _no!_ I _will not leave you!_ ”

John’s last words rang inside the tiny cabin of Molly’s car.

Into the silence, Sherlock dropped a sentence.

“Don’t you ever ask yourself whether I’m really worth it?”

Without looking at Sherlock John couldn’t tell whether that was meant to be taken seriously or not.

“Constantly,” John said.

And he smiled. Because if it he didn’t make it a joke, it might turn into something unbearable.

Sherlock’s body slowly uncoiled.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I didn’t mean for…all that…to come out.”

Sherlock tried to put his feet on the dashboard. His legs were too long, and he gave up.

“There is one thing you should know about Marie, John,” Sherlock finally said, in an almost conversational tone.

“And what is that?” John’s breathing was still uneven.

“Everything she tells you is the truth as she sees it,” he said. “But there’s always something she’s not telling you. Often it’s important.”

Up ahead, John saw a flash of lightning. A few seconds later came the crash.

“I do…care…about Marie,” Sherlock said. “But I don’t trust her. That was the thing about you,” he said, keeping his voice even. “I could never trust a single person in my own family. But I hadn’t known you a day before I knew that I’d always be able to trust you.”

John shook his head.

“You don’t trust me,” John said. “Not all the way. All the cases we’ve been on together and you never let me in until it’s absolutely necessary. You lie to me. You keep things from me. You always want to be the only one with all the cards. You know I’ll never betray you and you’re right. But you don’t trust me. Not completely.”

Sherlock’s eyes migrated to the window again.

John’s text alert went off.

Sherlock snapped out of his reverie and stared at the phone.

It seemed like he was staring at it for rather a long time.

John heard Sherlock sitting up and leaning forward.

“How fast do you think this car can go?” Sherlock said.

“What, Sherlock,” John snapped. “What did you just find out.”

“Eighty-five? Ninety? I’m sure Molly performs scheduled maintenance but there were some problems with this model involving rust in the undercarriage—“

“Sherlock, _so help me!_ ” John nearly screamed.

“All right, John!” Sherlock shouted. “All right. This time, this one time, I will tell you everything I know. But you have to promise me one thing first.”

“ _What_ ,” John spat.

“That you will control yourself.”

John took a deep breath. He tried to smile in a carefree sort of way.

“Look at me,” he said, gaily. “Look how in control I am.”

Sherlock was, evidently, taking a moment to look at him.

“Very well then,” Sherlock said. “That text I just got was Homeless Agent Stetson’s translation of the relevant bits of _De Gemmarum Mirandorum._ I’ll read the first passage verbatim, shall I?”

In the dark sky over a lonely motorway, a bright green fork of lightning shot from one cloud to stab at the heart of another. Far beneath it, a tiny yellow Fiat swerved wildly. But only once.

Above, the darkness went on grumbling. Down on the asphalt, the little Fiat sped along the motorway, responding obediently now to its driver’s hands.

*             *             *             *

They were in the country; but there were no stars. Nothing but thick and seething darkness. Underneath that murmuring sky unrolled the fields of Kingfisher Farms.

It was a bare, dark place. Square patches of striated dirt stretched out in every direction from a stark lump of a house that loomed up in the middle. At the far edge of the fields to the north, where the hills began to rise, Harry thought she might see a line of trees; but there was no moon and no stars and the further away from the house the darker and mistier everything became.

“Stop here.”

Harry put the car in park. They had driven on an unpaved track right up to the entrance to an old weather-beaten barn.

Ryder picked up the gun.

“Come with me,” she said, opening the car door.

“To do what?” Harry shot back.

Ryder aimed the gun at Harry’s head.

“All right, all right, all right.”

Harry got out, locked the car, and began trudging up the dirt road. They were headed toward an extension that stuck out at the back of the house, and ugly modern addendum to a farmhouse that must date from the eighteenth century.

“Get down.”

Following Ryder, Harry crouched down, keeping below the sight line of the windows.

“I need to get in there,” Ryder whispered.

It took Harry a moment to understand that Ryder herself did not have a plan for how to do this.

“What for?” Harry answered.

“My father’s in there,” Ryder said. Her eyes were very wide and very dark and her face was very pale. “My mother’s keeping him prisoner. She’s draining the life out of him. All I want to do is help him. But I need to get him out first.”

“You abducted me at gunpoint and forced me to drive you to the middle of nowhere and now you want me to help you break into your parents’ house.”

Ryder nodded. And, as she read Harry’s face, she drew out that gun again.

“Are you _insane_?” Harry whispered.  

“Maybe!” Ryder said, in a hoarse whisper.

The end of the gun barrel leapt about an inch closer to Harry’s face.

“Let’s just calm down for a moment,” Harry said, in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

“You _will_ help me,” Ryder said. “I know you will. I—I’m sorry about—everything—but—you understand. Nobody else on earth understands but you will and you’ll help me. You’ve got to help me,” Ryder said, shuddering because she didn’t want to cry. “I think if I didn’t know you would help me I would just blow my brains out right now.”

Ryder swung the gun barrel away from Harry and put it to her own temple.

“Stop!” Harry shouted.

“Shhhh!” Ryder hissed.

“Put the fucking gun down!” Harry whispered furiously. “Just put it down!”

Ryder lowered the gun, but pointed the barrel in Harry’s direction, breathing hard.

“You have to help me,” Ryder repeated.

Harry looked at Ryder’s miserable face, and those eyes that were nearly engulfed in darkness, and the fingers almost visibly trembling. That unwanted sympathy pricked at her throat again. The days when Harry had been that desperate, and things had looked that dark, seemed very close at hand.

“Well, as it happens, Ryder,” she said, “I have some experience in this area. Is there anyone in there with him?”

“No. Mum just puts a nappy on him and waits till morning.”

Even with everything else going on, Harry could still hear the anger in Ryder’s voice.

“Let me say this right now, Ryder,” Harry said slowly. “I think this is a terrible idea and I am doing this only under duress. I am not cooperating with you. You understand? I am not on your side.”

Why, Harry thought, does that not sound true even to me.

Ryder’s eyes were shining now, with something that looked like hope.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you would help me. It was in the cards.”

“You’re mad,” Harry replied.

“I’m sorry,” Ryder burst out, abruptly. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt anyone. This is just what I have to do.”

Harry sighed.

“Do you happen to have a utility knife on your person?”

Ryder slipped a hand into the pocket of her black trenchcoat and eagerly drew out an enormous red Swiss Army Knife.

“Jesus,” Harry said.

“What is it?” Ryder said.

“Never mind,” Harry said. “Is there a loo in this extension?”

“Yes. It’s the little square window on this side, closest to the house.”

“We’ll try that one first.”

Harry bent into a crouch and scuttled across the lawn. Ryder followed.

“Here,” Harry said. “Give me the knife.”

“No,” Ryder said, shoving it back into her pocket.

“Come on,” Harry hissed. “You can’t do this and hold a gun on me at the same time and I am not stupid enough to bring a knife to a gunfight. Now hand it over.”

Ryder pressed the barrel of the gun against Harry’s temple, then handed her the knife.

Muttering darkly, Harry stood slowly up. The gun barrel followed.

“I’m going to have to jump to reach the sill,” Harry said. “Please move the gun away from my head.”

Ryder withdrew it an inch or two.

Harry put the knife in one pocket and sprang for the sill. She managed to grab it. She scrabbled with her feet against the bricks until she was more or less braced, and dragged herself painfully up until she was level with the window.

It was an original window. That was lucky. Single-paned, and the glazing of the pane near the latch was easily cut away by the knife. Harry popped the pane out, tossed it down onto the grass behind her, then reached in and undid the latch. After that the window went right up.

“Give the knife back,” Ryder said.

Harry dropped the knife onto the grass. She put one hand into the gap between the sill and the window and pushed up the sash. She let herself fall back down.

“There you are,” Harry said to Ryder. “Your point of entry. Can I go now?”

Ryder waved the gun at her. “You go in first.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“I need help getting him into the chair.”

Harry just barely managed to scramble back up shove herself through the opening. In her salad days she’d gone through much smaller openings much more gracefully. Age and the accident had weakened her core and tightened her joints.

The bathroom was disappointingly free of items that could be used to overcome a gun-wielding lunatic. Not even a razor. Just ointment after ointment, lotion after lotion, and gauze gauze and more gauze. A pair of rubber gloves lay on the sink, smelling faintly of disinfectant. Must be a bottle under the sink. If it was a spray bottle--

Too late. Ryder had already come through, landing softly as a cat.

She lifted the gun again. “Out the door and to the left.”

Harry opened the loo door with a sigh. In the corridor it was almost totally dark. There was, however, a distinctive, not to say rotten, smell which served as a guide.

Ryder pulled out a torch and switched it on.

“Hurry,” she said, pointing the torch with one hand and the gun with the other. “If my mother sees a light on in here we’re dead.”

Harry groped her way into the bedroom, trying to decipher the flashes of light. She saw the curved headrail of an adjustable hospital bed. Propped up in it was a man. The flashlight lingered on his face.

He was almost totally bald, but for a few isolated tufts of dark hair. His face was fishbelly white. His eyes were closed. As the glare of the torch settled down, Harry saw that his skin was covered with scales.

Somehow, the outer layer of his skin had turned into tiny little fingernail-sized plaques, overlapping, hard, and almost reflective. His eyes were blinking in the light. Underneath the red-rimmed lids they had gone white too, filmy and dull.

“Dad,” Ryder said, moving to the head of the bed. “Dad, it’s me. It’s Ryder.”

The white eyes turned toward Ryder. His breathing was slow. His lips moved, but he couldn’t seem to form a complete sound. He moved a hand toward her, but after rising a few inches it dropped back lifeless onto his chest.

“You see what she’s done to him?” Ryder whispered. “Help me get him into the chair.”

Ryder had pulled over a collapsible wheelchair with a leather seat and molded handles. Harry looked back at the man in the bed. He was over six feet tall, but he seemed…not thin, exactly, but wasted. His scaly skin was loose, and he looked about forty years too old to have fathered Ryder.

“Ryder,” Harry whispered, “your father is very sick. I don’t think moving him is a good—“

“I don’t care what you think,” Ryder whispered back. “Get him in the chair.”

“Are you trying to kill him?” Harry said.

“I’m saving him!” Ryder shot back. “And you can help me do it or I can shoot you in the head. Or shoot myself. Or shoot him, I might as well at that point, death would be better than this!”

“What’s the matter with him?” Harry murmured.

“I told you. My mother is draining his life force.”

Harry peered through the torch beam at Ryder’s face.

“You mother is a vampire?”

“No. She’s a witch.”

Harry sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. She tried to get her heart to stop hammering.

All right. You will not talk Ryder out of this. So what then. You could yell for help. Only any sudden noise is liable to make that gun go right off. You could run. Only it’s dark and you don’t know whether any of the people in this family are any less mad than Ryder is. You could tackle her. Only there is, again, the gun.

Right now Ryder seems not to want to kill you. Let’s just keep it that way for the time being.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, to Ryder’s father. “I’m going to have to help her. At least for right now. But I’ll look out for you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She was making promises she couldn’t keep to a man who might not even be able to hear them. Not for the first time, Harry looked back over the past twenty-four hours and wondered what the hell had happened to the universe.

“You take the shoulders, I’ll take his legs.”

They swung him together into the chair. Ryder picked up the bedding and tucked the blankets very tenderly around his limbs.

“I’m getting you out of here, Dad,” she murmured into his dead-white ear. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”

Ryder picked up the gun.

“There’s a door at the other end of the room,” she said, shining the torch onto it. “There are two deadbolts on it. Undo both and push him through. I’ll be right behind you with this. Don’t do anything I haven’t told you to do or go anywhere I don’t tell you to go.”

Harry gripped the handles and wheeled the man around. She opened the door and pushed him through, waiting for Ryder to shut it behind them.

“Where to now?” Harry whispered.

“Into the woods,” Ryder said, in a strangely husky voice.

A thunderclap, quite nearby, made Harry jump almost out of her skin.

The gun did not go off.

“Hurry,” Ryder barked, as the wind rose. “Before it starts to rain.”

*             *             *

Gregson drove his car along the circular gravel drive, pulling right up to the front door of the gaunt and grim-boned farmhouse. It looked about to rain any moment now, and there was no sense getting wet. Most of the windows in the house were dark, but there were two windows lit on the first floor, and as he’d driven around he’d seen a light on the ground floor in what was probably the kitchen. The extension Dodd had mentioned in his narrative was not visible from this angle.

It would be nice to be Sherlock Holmes, Gregson thought, and be able to do anything you wanted. As it was, Gregson would be lucky if he didn’t get raked over the coals first thing Monday morning just for having agreed to touch this mess of Lestrade’s. Infuriating as Jones was, it was still just not done—taking up another man’s case, and conclusively proving that he had made a mess of it. And then bringing in yet another detective after you were nearly killed.

The wind rattled the branches of the trees, and made Gregson wish Lestrade was with him. But poor Greg deserved a rest, and this was just a witness interview. Bit late in the evening for it, but it was still his regular shift. There wouldn’t be a bill for overtime.

Gregson knocked on the massive oak front door.

Receiving no immediate response, he knocked again, louder, and called out, “Police. Open up, please.”

A sound of slippered feet traveling hurriedly down a corridor, and then the door opened a crack. Through the slit he could see a woman, well into middle-age, thin but wiry and with disordered brown hair.

“Ms. Kingfisher?” he said. “I’m Detective Inspector Gregson. May I come in?”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“No, Ms. Kingfisher. I don’t intend to search. I only want to ask you a few questions about your daughter Ryder.”

The door opened a little wider. He could see that she had on a black dressing-gown made of some sleek and shiny material, and a pair of shearling slippers. Her face was quite striking, really—not beautiful exactly, but strong-featured, with sharp eyes.

“Ryder,” she sighed. “Tell me. What’s she mixed up in now? Robbery? Drugs? Murder?”

Gregson smiled. “Actually a little of each, Ms. Kingfisher.”

Lily Kingfisher opened the door wide, stepping back to beckon him into the hallway.

“Come in, Detective Inspector,” she said. “I don’t know that I’ll be any use, but I’ll do what I can to help. The faster you find her, the happier I’ll be.”

*             *             *             *

On the bald summit of the hill overlooking Kingfisher Farms, the trees stopped quite suddenly. Ryder’s torch played over the ground in front of them, painting white gleams along the edges of the stones that jutted at unplanned angles from the spongy, grass-covered earth before them. After a moment Harry realized they were not just stones. They were slabs, some marble but most of them granite, pitted with erosion and spotted with lichens but still bearing inscriptions which were still partially legible. Some of them had been placed flush with the ground—one day, long ago—and some perpendicular. But there were no right angles in sight now. Centuries had passed and beneath their six feet of earth coffins had shifted and rotted and collapsed. Now the grave markers and headstones looked like broken teeth loosely set in the cavities of a rotten mouth.

“There,” Ryder said, flashing the torch onto a pile of white stone on the other side of the graveyard. “Take him in there.”

The ruin lit up by the beam had at one time been a church, or rather a chapel. The roof was gone now. The peaked windows set into the stone walls had probably once held stained glass; but all that was gone now. One wall had been blackened by fire. The empty door arch yawned at them, dark and obscene.

“Ryder,” Harry said, firmly, “your father needs a hospital. Not whatever this is.”

A gust of wind ripped through the clearing, snaking through the empty windows of the ruined chapel. Ryder’s father moaned. He was cold.

“Do as I say!”

Now they were away from the house, Ryder was not afraid to shout. Turning up the volume emphasized just how tightly she was stretched and how great a strain she was under. All the same, gun or no gun, Harry’s whole gut rebelled at the idea of just walking into something that could have been built for a _Buffy_ season finale.

“What are you planning to do to him?” Harry shouted back.

“Cure him.”

“By praying? You could do that at home.”

Ryder shoved her left hand into one of the pockets of the black trenchcoat. She drew out a plastic vial with a watertight cap. She tossed the thing at Harry’s feet.

“Pick it up,” Ryder said.

“No,” Harry answered.

“ _Pick it up!_ ”

Keeping her eyes on Ryder, Harry squatted down, felt in the grass for the thing, and straightened up with it cool in her hand.

“Drink it,” Ryder said.

“Seriously?” Harry demanded.

The gun clicked. Harry wasn’t sure, but it could well be that Ryder had just taken the safety off.

“ _Now!_ ” Ryder shouted.

Harry looked down at the vial in her hand.

She lifted her eyes to meet Ryder’s. They looked desperate enough for anything. Harry saw, in them, the hat, the hyacinths, the tarot cards spread out on the bed. She heard Sherlock’s voice in the back of her head. _This, John, is the hair of someone whose impulse control is even poorer than yours is._

And yet, now that Harry knew what she had to do, she felt no fear at all.

Harry uncapped the vial.

“Ryder,” she said, calmly. “I know what this shite is supposed to do and I know what the active ingredients are. And you can kill me; but you can’t make me drink this.”

Harry upended the vial. The liquid poured out of it and disappeared in the grass.

Ryder’s hand tightened on the gun. The light from the torch she held in the other wavered. Harry wished she could see Ryder’s face more clearly; but it wouldn’t have changed her decision.

“It’s all right, Ryder,” Harry said, gently. “You don’t have to drug me into obeying you. I know what I have to do. I was in the cards, wasn’t I? The final outcome. The willing sacrifice.”

A sob came from somewhere behind the gun.

“You’ve known from the moment you saw me,” Harry said. “Just as I have. You’re me. I’m you. You’re my younger self.”

The gun trembled a little.

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, Ryder,” Harry said. “Anything. You can’t force me. But all you have to do is ask.”

A swallowing sound, and a long sniff.

“Please take my father into the chapel,” Ryder said. She was still crying.

“All right, Ryder,” Harry said.

Harry pushed the chair over the lank, tangled grass and the sunken stones through the arch that led to the chapel floor.

Ryder leapt ahead of her. Harry heard the flick of a lighter, and a candle flame blossomed in the darkness. The candle was three inches thick, with a deep depression at the top and wax drips congealed along the sides. It fluctuated, but it kept burning, even in the wind. It was set into a sconce still attached to one of the walls. There were at least a dozen of these candles in sconces all around the walls, and Ryder was lighting them all, one hand holding the lighter and the other—still—keeping the gun trained on Harry.

In the fitful light of the flames, Harry could now see that the only thing left in this chapel, apart from the sconces and some bits of iron where pews had once been bolted to the stone floor, was the altar. It was simple enough—a thick white rectangle raised up on a stout stone pedestal.

“Line him up parallel to the altar,” Ryder said, quietly.

Harry positioned him near one end of the stone. His head turned, slowly, only a very little. She wondered how much of this was getting in to him, whether he was as frightened as he ought to be. The wind raked through the room, howling in through one set of windows and out the others. Thunder rolled overhead. A little shower of pebbles rattled down to the floor from the tops of the ruined walls.

“So,” Harry said, folding her hands demurely in front of her. “How does the magic work?”

Ryder had finished lighting the candles. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of that trenchcoat. This had to be the fulfillment of months of planning and, perhaps, years upon years of fantasies. And yet, Harry noted with satisfaction, Ryder didn’t seem to be enjoying this at all.

Ryder reached inside the trenchcoat, fumbling around somewhere inside her clothes. She drew out a blue stone, which caught what light there was, flinging it onto the walls and floor in a hundred directions. It was beautiful, and it did almost look as if it were burning with its own fire.

Ryder took her father’s hand and laid it palm up on the altar. She put the stone in his palm. She waited, almost as if she were expecting him to move or speak then and there. When he didn’t, she turned her face to Harry.

“The blue carbuncle is…a conductor,” Ryder said. “It’s a…conduit…for spiritual energy. You lie down…here…and you put your hand on top of the stone. Your…”

Ryder swallowed the end of the sentence, along with some more tears.

“My life force,” Harry said quietly. “At the moment of my death, it flows from me into the stone, and then from the stone into your father, correct?”

Ryder nodded.

“And does it matter how I’m killed?” Harry said.

Another desperate gulping sound.

“Yes,” Ryder said. “Your throat…it’s…the blood has to…”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Of course. There has to be blood. You cut my throat, and my blood flows onto the earth, symbolically fertilizing it, and this sympathetically generates your father’s rejuvenation, doesn’t it?”

Ryder said, hoarsely, “Yes.”

Oh the immaturity. Oh how it burned.

“All right then, Ryder,” Harry said. “Off we go.”

Harry sat on the edge of the altar, swung her legs up, and laid down with her head pointing toward the end near the wheelchair. She put her palm over the carbuncle and clasped the man’s hand in her own. It was nearly as cold as the stone.

Harry looked up into the dark sky that arched over the chapel instead of a roof. The walls ended in broken stone, shifted now and then by the wind. Bits and pieces would go on tumbling from them until the walls collapsed too.

Ryder took up her position at the head of the altar. She leaned over and laid something on Harry’s chest. Harry couldn’t quite see it, but she knew it was a tarot card. The final outcome. The Hanged Man.

She heard Ryder laying the gun carefully down on one of the stones. Ryder’s face loomed over her, upside down. Candlelight painted it in streaks and curves. She was wearing a savage enough mask; but those desperate eyes were still shining with tears. In one hand she held the Swiss Army knife. She had pulled out its biggest, sharpest cutting blade.

“Go on then,” Harry said.

“Close your eyes,” Ryder said.

“No.”

“Please,” Ryder repeated.

“No. If you can cut my throat, then you can look me in the eye.”

“You think I can’t do it.” Ryder’s voice was trembling. “But I can. _I can._ ”

“Then go on,” Harry said.

Ryder lifted the knife. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Harry rolled herself right off the altar. Her body landed hard on the stone, sending pains shooting through her right hip and shoulder.

At the same moment, something landed with a thud on the stone surface of the altar; but it wasn’t the knife. Something big, something heavy, something flapping and dark-winged, had dropped from the roof and knocked Ryder flat.

Harry got painfully onto her hands and knees. From the other side of the altar, she heard John’s voice.

“I’ve got the gun, Sherlock!”

There was a moment of complete silence, except for a lot of very heavy breathing.

“Harry? You all right?” John called out.

Pushing herself up on a corner of the altar, Harry saw John, standing by one of the windows, training the gun on Ryder. Sherlock stood over the altar, one fist pressed into Ryder’s back between the shoulders. The other hand was splayed across the side of Ryder’s head, pressing it into the stone. Her arms made two black slashes across the white marble. In the chair, Ryder’s father made unintelligible moaning sounds.

Looking at Sherlock’s face gave Harry chills. She was glad that at the moment that John couldn’t see it.

“I’m all right,” Harry said. “I mean I’m probably about five years closer to a hip replacement, but I’m not cut or anything. And,” Harry said, “in case anyone still cares, I’ve got the fucking blue carbuncle.”

She opened her hand.

John saw it first. Then Sherlock glanced over, drawn by the fragments of light thrown from its facets.

She had been hoping that Sherlock would laugh. Instead, he grabbed Ryder by the scruff of her neck and flipped her over on her back, keeping one hand at her throat as she looked up at him in terror.

“Now,” Sherlock said through gritted teeth. “What to do with _this_ miserable object.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” Ryder whispered.

“I cannot think of a single reason not to,” Sherlock snarled.

“I had to do it!” Ryder screamed. “For my father! Look at him, he’s dying!”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, with a smile that Harry did not find reassuring. “You were doing all this for your _family._ ”

“Yes,” Ryder said, nodding as best she could.

“I quite understand now,” Sherlock said, softly. “We’d all do anything for family, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes,” Ryder said, her voice a little more hopeful.

Sherlock grasped Ryder by the front of that trenchcoat, lifted her a few inches, then slammed her back into the altar. Sherlock bent over her, his face red with rage, his teeth snapping only millimeters from her nose.

“Well, Harry is _John’s_ family!” he roared. “And that makes her _my family!”_

Ryder was evidently too frightened to speak. Harry could understand that. She herself found that assertion terrifying.

“Sherlock, let her up,” John said. “Look at her, she can hardly breathe. Please.”

Sherlock dragged her up, pushed her back until she was sitting on the altar, then dropped his hand and turned away from her with a snarl. He took a few paces in John’s direction. Then he swung around, his coat carving ominous shapes in the air.

“What have you to say for yourself?” Sherlock shouted.

For a long, excruciating time, they watched Ryder struggle for breath.

“My father came home from Afghanistan seven years ago,” Ryder finally gasped. “I was only young but I knew something was wrong. He never left the house. He was tired all the time. His skin was getting paler and paler. Mum wouldn’t take him to a doctor,” Ryder shouted. “She wouldn’t let him see anyone. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. He kept asking me if I could forgive him. I said for what, he wouldn’t tell me, I said no matter what, Dad, I’ll always forgive you, I’ll always love you. He got worse and worse,” Ryder went on, her voice drifting into a plaintive wail. “Mum had that extension built to keep him in, the smell was so bad and there were all the liniments and ointments but nothing worked,” she cried. “We kept running the farm but it wasn’t making enough money and then Mum started growing the poppy-heads and we started selling them and that kept us going all right but she would never take him to a doctor.”

John, while Ryder fought for breath, slipped around the altar toward the wheelchair, and began examining Ryder’s father.

“And you started to believe that your mother was killing him,” Sherlock said.

“What else could it be?” Ryder wept. “He’s never been diagnosed, it’s not like any disease I’ve ever heard of and I have looked up _all of them_ ,” she wailed. “And all Mum wanted to do was give him these…potions…my grandmother taught her to make and put him to bed. And half of those things are poisons and the other half are drugs and none of it did him any good and all he got was worse. And then last fall, we had to get in extra help for the harvest season, we always do, and they have…there are these websites that recruit farm workers from outside the UK…”

“Ah,” Sherlock said. “So that’s how you met Sophia.”

“Her family was well-off once but they lost everything in the crash,” Ryder said. “She came over here with a load of other teenagers from Greece and…it was just magic.”

Telling the story seemed to calm her down somehow. The chance to talk about Sophia, Harry thought. The only thing in the world that might still be capable of making her feel good.

“Mum found out,” Ryder said. “She was horrible. She threatened to..." Ryder broke it off, and shook her head. "We were scared. We…ran away.”

Harry said, “And you found Irene Adler.”

“No,” Sherlock said, with that long-drawn breath that meant he was just now putting a new piece into the puzzle. “She found you. You drifted into the great sea of homeless youth in London and Irene Adler fishes there just as Moriarty did, just as I still do. A beautiful princess in exile, guarded by her loyal chevalier. You would have appealed to her, even before she found out about your…hidden talents.”

Ryder nodded.

“We went to work for her,” she said, miserably. “And it was good. I didn’t mind Sophia’s working with those men. They didn’t mean anything to her. Irene let us live with her, she bought us clothes, she fed us…” Ryder stopped.

“And then she made a play for Sophia,” Sherlock said dryly.

“Yes.”

“And Sophia, being young and romantic, rebuffed her in the most insulting and humiliating terms imaginable,” Sherlock replied.

Ryder nodded.

“So Irene Adler threw you both onto the street,” Sherlock said. “And then what?”

Ryder shook her head.

“As you hope for mercy,” Sherlock hissed, “you had better tell me everything, and you had better tell me _NOW_.”

“Latimer offered to take us in,” Ryder said. “He wanted the…my grandmother’s potion, too, and he said he would put us both up if Sophia would do her…things…for him and his friends and I would make the stuff. And we all went out to this big house that _Kemp_ owned in…in Breckenridge. And neither of us could stand it. And Latimer was boasting to Sophia all about the things he was going to do with the stuff that _I_ made for him and she heard about the blue carbuncle. She didn’t even tell me what she was planning. She just stole it off him one night and came to me with it and told me what it was and said, ‘You can take this home, you can cure your father, he will save us.’”

Oh God, Harry thought. Save the father and the lover at the same time, how could you resist it.

“Right,” said John, looking up from the wheelchair. “Perfectly sensible plan. And who were you planning to ritually murder _that_ time?”

Ryder put her head in her hands.

“Your mother,” Sherlock replied.

Ryder nodded, still not looking up.

“Hence the barring order,” John said, returning to his new patient with a sigh.

“But that did not go entirely as planned,” Sherlock said. “And so just before your mother chased you out, you passed the stone to your loyal confederate George, not of course telling him what you were planning to use it for, but asking him to keep it for you until you could come back and make another attempt. George, knowing that no place in the house would be safe from your mother, and rather having chickens on the brain, decided to hide it in one of his beloved birds, choosing a young one to give you plenty of time. You returned to London, living on the streets, hoping to elude the many many enemies you had made. Latimer got his American friend to contact Sophia, inveigling her out to that Friar’s Mead house and taking her prisoner. And the plan changed again.”

The sound of Ryder crying filled the chapel.

“What do you know about this Kemp and this American?” Sherlock said.

“I know Kemp is the sickest bastard in London,” Ryder sobbed. “That’s all I know. I don’t know what American you’re talking about.”

Sherlock sighed.

“John?” Sherlock inquired. His rage had abated, but Harry still couldn’t read him. “Anything we can learn from your patient?”

John looked up. “Well, the skin looks bad, but of course that’s just a symptom,” he said. “I should say that his real illness might be some sort of auto-immune disease that interferes with his cells’ ability to regenerate. It certainly doesn’t look like anything I’m familiar with. But strange things happen in wartime,” John said, as his eyes got that faraway look. “They still don’t know what causes Gulf War Syndrome. Also they still don’t acknowledge that Gulf War Syndrome is in any way related to the actual Gulf War.”

Sherlock looked from the soldier in the wheelchair to the soldier standing next to him.

“Well, Ryder,” Sherlock said. “There are only two things left to clear up.”

Ryder looked up at him with her red, tear-streaked face.

“Thing number one. Who told George to sell Harry that chicken?”

John was suddenly on the alert. Harry also would have liked to know the answer to that question; but they both seemed to attach extreme significance to it.

Ryder sighed.

“I tried to come out here and get the stone,” Ryder said. “I couldn’t. So I contacted Irene Adler. I told her what was happening. She came up with the plan. We’d get George to bring the chicken to market. I couldn’t buy it, of course, Mum wouldn’t let me near the stall, but Irene would. The only thing was George didn’t know what Irene Adler looked like and you cannot actually find a single picture of her online, I don’t know why…”

Well that would be Mycroft. But of course that was one of the many things Ryder didn’t know about the world she’d been moving in.

“And she wouldn’t let me take a new one, she doesn’t want the Internet to know she’s still alive. So I told him to give the chicken to a woman with long dark hair, only she wears it up in a hat when she goes out because she’ll be dressed sort of like a man but not really because…”

Ryder took her first real look at Harry since the Stab That Wasn’t.

“Harry will understand,” Ryder said.

“You mean that she’s a femme indoors but when she’s out and about cloak and daggering she likes to do it _en butch,_ ” Harry said.

Ryder nodded gratefully.

“That was why he was staring at me,” Harry sighed. “He knew I didn’t quite fit the description, but I suppose I was close enough. Maybe he thought I’d cut my hair on a whim.”

“But to leave it to _chance_ like that!” Sherlock said, his dismay at human stupidity momentarily overriding his outrage. “You should have agreed on a password that she could use during the transaction to identify herself as—“

Ryder dropped her eyes. And from three other people in that ruined chapel came a gasp of sudden comprehension.

“Oh my God,” Harry said, turning to Sherlock. “It’s because I said your name. Her mother asked me if I wanted something special, and I told her the whole story about the bet and everything else and I said the words ‘Sherlock Holmes.’”

“The perfect ending to a perfect day!” John shouted bitterly. “All of this fucking death and destruction because _That Woman_ is still _SHER-locked!_ ”

A horrified silence fell onto the stone floor of the chapel. It was broken only by another thunderclap, rattling and deafening and much too close.

Sherlock stalked toward the altar. Ryder watched him come, fascinated and terrified. He put both hands on the stone ledge and leaned into Ryder’s face.

“Thing number two,” Sherlock said, very softly. “Who killed Harold Latimer?”

Ryder’s mouth trembled.

“Tell the truth!” Sherlock roared.

“It was me,” Ryder said, weakly.

“But we _saw_ Irene Adler riding—“ John began.

“No,” Harry said. “We saw someone wearing Irene Adler’s coat and hat. And she’s still wearing the coat.”

Ryder fingered the black trenchcoat she had wrapped around her. They all waited.

“I said I wanted to kill him,” Ryder said. “Irene said I should dress up as her, if you thought she was the shooter you wouldn’t pursue her.”

“The fucking gall,” John shouted. Sherlock remained silent.

“She gave me the gun and the coat and the hat and her blessing and off I ran.”

“You knew this all along,” John said to Sherlock.

“Irene Adler doesn’t know how to use a gun,” Sherlock said. “That was obvious from the way she was holding it. Ryder does,” he went on. “But killing with a gun is different. With all your blood boiling it’s easy enough to yield to the impulse and pull the trigger. But you couldn’t kill in cold blood. At least not with your eyes open. Harry must have known that.”

“Well,” Harry said. “ ‘Known’ would be putting it a little strongly. ‘Hoped,’ more like.”

“Can I just say, Harry,” John cried out, “what a daft fucking plan that was?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “You can say it as often as you like. It will remind me how happy I am to be alive to hear it. It was daft. It was just the best I could do at the time.”

“So then,” John said. “Does anyone here have Donovan’s number?”

Ryder crumpled. She wasn’t even crying any more. She was done, finished, exhausted. She had lost everything that ever mattered to her. She couldn’t even fantasize about revenge because she had already killed one of Sophia’s murderers and it hadn’t made her feel any better. And the fantasy she had been nurturing for years had shattered into fragments on the floor of this ruin. Even if she still believed in magic, she must know now that she would never have been able to kill her mother, even if she could have dragged her onto the altar. She had believed in things that couldn’t exist and worked for things that couldn’t happen for most of her young life and she was finally being forced to let go.

Sherlock drew back, studying her face. Then he leaned forward again.

“Get out,” he said.

“What?” John called.

“Get out!” Sherlock roared, gesturing with a sweeping motion to the empty archway.

Trembling, Ryder looked back at her father.

“Do _not_ give me time to think twice! _RUN!_ ”

“Sherlock!” John shouted. His hand went to the gun, which he had laid down on the slab; but Ryder was already out the door, leaving behind nothing but a breeze.

“I am not retained by the police!” Sherlock shouted back. “If Donovan can’t catch her own murderer that is not my problem.”

“She tried to kill Harry!” John shouted.

“She did not succeed,” Sherlock returned. “And she never would have. She wouldn’t have shot Latimer either if Irene Adler hadn’t given her the gun. Ryder is _not_ the murderer I’m hunting tonight. She is not a master criminal or even a psychopath. She is a tragically deluded child who still believes in fairies and whose life has been destroyed by people smarter and stronger and far more twisted than she ever had a hope of being. She’s twenty years old. If she goes on trial they will say the change of coat signaled premeditation and they will convict her of murder in the first degree. Ryder would not last six months in prison. She wouldn't last one.”

Sherlock turned to John, holding out one hand, the palm turned up, the fingers cupped around it as if it held something small and precious and fragile.

“Once in a great while, this job puts someone’s fate in my hands,” Sherlock said. “Ryder’s life is mine to take or mine to give. If I were Lestrade the rules would spare me the choice. I am a free agent. It’s _my choice._ Ryder has been to the dark side and she knows now that it is not her natural environment. Ryder’s future is the _one_ thing that we can perhaps salvage from this wreckage. I hold in my hand the one good thing that could possibly come out of this night’s work and _you_ want me to _crush_ it?”

“No, Sherlock,” said John, in what to Harry were the unmistakable accents of love. “No, I don’t.”

Sherlock spread his fingers wide. Ryder’s future leapt from the palm of his hand into the candlelit air.

“But you didn’t even ask Harry,” John said.

Sherlock glanced in Harry’s direction, briefly. “Oh, obviously Harry approves. She has the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome I have ever seen. But if Harry verbally condones what I just did, or if she ever admits that she did any of what she did tonight for any reason other than coercion they’ll have her law license, and we can’t have that, John.”

John looked at Harry.

“Thanks for coming for me,” Harry said.

The sentence wasn’t over before she had burst out crying. John left the wheelchair and its occupant for a moment, and came over to put his arms around her. She held onto him and cried. He held her tighter.

“Of course I came for you,” he said. “I wish we’d got here earlier.”

“Fucking James fucking Frazier!” Harry shouted, pummeling poor John’s back with her fists. “Fucking Jessie fucking Weston! I almost got fucking killed tonight by Victorian anthropology!”

“Harry, I don’t know what on earth you’re on about,” John said, “but if Victorian anthropology ever bothers you again, you come straight to me, all right? I’ll sort it out.”

Harry snuffled, and finally let go. “All right, John.”

Sherlock was still standing by the altar with that coat buttoned up, looking very grim and very impatient. John drifted back toward the wheelchair, pulling out his mobile.

“You’re not calling Donovan,” Sherlock said.

“I’m not,” John answered. “I’m calling an ambulance.” He nodded toward Ryder’s father. “He hasn’t been poisoned that I know of, but there are certainly signs of neglect and he’s long overdue for proper medical care. We’ll have to take him back down to the house first, they’ll never get the ambulance up here. And of course we’ll have to speak with his wife.”

Harry went over to grab the wheelchair. She turned him around, piloting him toward the exit. As she passed Sherlock, she said, “Thank you.”

Sherlock looked, for a moment, as if he were going to say something; and then he turned away to follow John.

*             *             *             *

How Harry had got that wheelchair _up_ the hill John could not imagine. It was tough work just getting him back down. She must have been absolutely steaming with adrenaline. John was just barely beginning to return to normal himself. What a night. What a fucking night. Down the hill with the thunder getting louder and louder until John thought he would go mad if it didn’t finally rain.

They reached the house at last. There was a gray car parked along the unpaved road that led to it. It had a London license plate.

Sherlock stared at it for a moment. Then he said, with a twitch of annoyance, “Gregson.”

“Who?” Harry said.

“He’s eager, I’ll give him that,” John said. “New detective. We broke Lestrade. But at least Molly’s probably putting him back together right now—“

John stopped. Sherlock had gone up to the house’s front door, and instead of ringing the bell, he was motioning for them to be silent.

John crept closer, followed by Harry.

Sherlock touched the door handle. It swung open. It hadn’t been locked. It hadn’t even been properly closed.

John raised the gun. It felt so good to have it in his hands, even if it wasn’t his own.

“You stay here, Harry,” John whispered.

“Fuck that,” Harry whispered back. “If tonight has taught me anything it’s that I’m much safer with you than I am on my own.”

She had a point.

“Then stay behind and stay out of the way,” Sherlock hissed.

They slipped into the hallway. The muffled sound of voices was audible immediately. Following the source, they slid along the opposite wall and around the corner to a rectangular opening that evidently communicated to the living area.

Sherlock flattened himself against the wall, and took a quick look into the opening. He withdrew immediately.

From inside the room, John heard a rather high-pitched male voice with a North African accent.

“There is no need for unpleasantness,” he was saying. “We could of course turn this property upside down looking for it; but it would be so much easier if you would just tell us where it is.”

“I think we should find George,” said another voice.

It was a man’s voice, deep and rich, with an American accent.

“Yes,” Kemp chimed in. “Ryder often mentioned him to Sophia, this younger brother. If she told anyone, it would have been him.”

Gregson’s voice, a little shaky but determined. “There is no need to drag the children into this. You’d only make it worse for yourselves.”

“My friend,” said Kemp. “Go and wake up Master George and fetch him here. I’m sure that between the two of us—“

“NO!”

A woman’s scream. And then the unmistakable sound of hell breaking loose.

There was no time to think.

Sherlock and John burst through the doorway. Kemp had a baseball bat lifted up over his head, ready to bring it down on the skull of the woman who was writhing and moaning on the floor, clutching her knee. Gregson sat in a hardbacked chair in a corner, pinioned with his own handcuffs and more of that hideous duck tape. In another corner slouched a man in jeans and a long leather coat, six feet high if he was an inch, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the scene as if he were totally unconcerned with it.

Sherlock flung himself on Kemp. John found his stance, got the American in his sights, and said, “Put your hands in the air.”

“Who the fuck are _you_?” demanded the American.

Kemp’s body hit the floor with a thud and remained there, inert. Sherlock, standing up and wiping the blood from his knuckles, said, “I’m Sherlock Holmes. This is Dr. Watson. I advise you to do as he says.”

The American let out a rueful laugh, and shook his head.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, lifting his hands slowly from his pockets. “Well, I guess I know when I’m beaten. Your little homicide cop here didn’t give me much trouble,” he said, turning toward the fuming Gregson, “but you, you’re a different…”

The American’s hands went back into his pockets.

John felt for the safety.

A gun leapt out of the American’s pocket.

A bang. The smell of burning powder. And red-hot searing pain.

John’s body dropped to the floor. Somewhere above his head, there were springing footsteps and an inarticulate cry of rage and the sound of a baseball bat hitting a human skull. John didn’t look. He couldn’t see anything. The pain had blotted everything out.

How could he still be there, John thought, how could he still be writhing and screaming in the dirt of the street with the IEDs going off all around him, how could his leg still _hurt_ like that, as if it had been pierced with a red-hot harpoon. It was over, it was all over, how could it be happening _again._

No. No. It wasn’t Afghanistan. He was on a living room floor, in the center of a pool of rapidly expanding blood. Sherlock was kneeling over him, grasping one of John’s hand in both of his, just as if that would stop the bleeding.

“Tell me you’re not hurt!" Sherlock's hands were shaking and so was his voice. “For God’s sake, John, tell me you will be all right!”

John looked into Sherlock’s eyes. And it was as if they opened up and John could see right through Sherlock, right into his beating heart. Oh God, John thought, to discover this only now. To feel only now how full that heart was. How much it had always held.

Every time John’s own heart beat, it pumped more blood through the hole that bullet had torn. Lightheaded, already feeling his temperature drop, John had, at the same time, one moment of perfect happiness.

 _He would give me his heart,_ John thought. _When mine stops. He would give me his own._

John gripped Sherlock’s hands as hard as he could.

“It’s worth it,” he forced out. “You’ve always been worth it.”

The terror on Sherlock’s poor face hurt more than any bullet could.

He wanted to tell Sherlock that it would be all right, even if it was a lie. But he couldn’t make the words come. He was drifting away from them all. Voices floated around him, all of them turbulent, all of them meaning less and less as he floated farther away.

“He’s bleeding out!” he could hear Harry screaming. “Tell me what to do! What do I do?”

He felt something being wrapped around his leg; but he didn’t care much about that. He was still holding Sherlock’s hand. He couldn’t see his face. The living room was gone. He was staring into a blinding white sky, and the voices unrolled across it like banners.

 _no no no_      _stay with me_         _Jesus Christ we were almost home_

 _you had better pray he lives_         _or no jail will protect you_

_the ambulance is here listen to me the ambulance is here everybody move_

Falling, falling, falling toward the ground at a hundred miles an hour but it kept receding and everything was falling, the buildings themselves, towers crashing down, all of London screaming and crying and city after city burning and Jim Moriarty was there among the clouds wearing that maddening grin and singing _London bridge is falling down falling down falling down_

Silence. At last.

*             *             *             *

_Unreal_

The paramedics counted to three. John’s body rose from the floor, the legs of the stretcher expanding and locking into place. John's trousers were soaked. He had lost a pint at least. More than a pint. Count the bloodstains on the floor accounting for the thickness of the pile and the fact that it was a brown carpet and didn’t show the blood like white would more than a pint. Definitely do not think about how much more than a pint that is Sherlock turn it off turn it off turn it off.

_Unreal_

The doors were flung open at the back of the ambulance and Sherlock stood and watched them wheel the stretcher up to the gates of death and one of the paramedics had a drip started on him already wasting no time every movement of every part of either of their faces or bodies just said the same thing over and over louder and louder _critical condition_ _critical condition_

_Unreal_

Standing with the gravel under his feet of course the glare from the ambulance’s lights distorts the color but from the size of the stones and the smell of the dust raised by the wheels of the gurney most likely from a landscaper located in the nearby stop stop fuck the soil samples and the gravel and the cut of that American’s coat been in London for some time shut up Sherlock I will never hear him say that again shut up Sherlock shut up shut up

_Unreal_

And it was all of a sudden absolutely clear. High definition. John’s body disappearing into that ambulance and Harry standing there white as a sheet talking to the paramedics and could that possibly be Lestrade and Molly running over from that car at the edge of the drive well perhaps she needed her car back there’s always a logical explanation but focus, Sherlock, the important thing, the important thing is the scales are balancing, you’re a Libra, Marie always said, remember that the scales always balance, humans distort much but the scales will always balance.

He watched me die. I made him do that. For the scales to balance, I must watch him die.

He was picking up the voices again now. He could hear, quite distinctly, the paramedic calling out, “Who’s going in the ambulance? Who’s his next of kin?”

“I’m his next of kin,” Harry said, shakily. “But Sherlock’s his partner, he should go with him.”

Harry turned toward Sherlock. The paramedics looked at him. Molly and Lestrade and Gregson all looked at him.

The voice in Sherlock's head said it again. _For the scales to balance, I must watch him die._

Sherlock turned around and ran.

Nothing in front of him now but the darkness and the fields and the hills rising above them. He heard the voices screaming after him. _Sherlock!_

He wouldn’t listen. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t grasp the logic of it. 

Thunder split the sky. Rain poured down.

 _Oh God_. Harry must be screaming if he could hear her above the rain. _Christ. Oh, just go. Go!_

The sirens drowned everything out at first. But they were soon lost in the thunder and the pelting rain and the impact of the rocky earth under his feet as his legs took him up the hill, into the woods, charging between the tree trunks with the wet boughs whipping across his face.

The thunder roared. Sherlock roared right back at it. A mad howl from a raw throat, a formless screaming without words.

The thunder screamed his own emptiness back at him. The wind around him was speaking, he could hear the words. _Sherlock._ _Sherlock_. _Sherlock, where are you, you arsehole. Come here, Sherlock, you poor bastard._

His feet kept carrying him away from the voices, up the hill. Back to the last place of safety. Back to the last place where everything had been right and they had all been happy.

Lungs bursting, Sherlock nearly fell across the threshold. The candles were out, dripping with rain. Twilight seemed to be leaking in from somewhere. In the dim purple light, he saw a woman standing in the middle of the ruined chapel. She was no more than a dark silhouette. She was drawing out her long black hair, twisting it into a coiled rope, wringing water from it. The high priestess, back at the altar.

Sherlock’s hands dropped onto the near side of the altar. He leaned on it, screaming at the woman on the other side of the slab.

“Tell me how it ends!” he shouted. “For God’s sake! Tell me how it ends, Marie!”

The woman came slowly toward him. She seemed twenty years younger, with that lithe grace he remembered from when he was a boy.

“Sherlock?” she said.

“You know how it ends!” he screamed at her. “Tell me the truth, Marie! Tell me what happens next. _Tell me he will live!”_

The woman reached out one long-nailed hand and traced the contours of his face, gently.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt.”

The hand became a fist. His head spun; and everything went black.

*             *             *

“Sherlock!” Lestrade screamed it into the rain, flashing his torch ahead of him. Fat lot of good a torch was in a torrential downpour; all it lit up was the rain. He forged ahead anyhow, dodging the tree trunks that seemed to leap out at him.

God, the look on Sherlock’s face when Harry turned to him. All the times he and Sherlock had nearly died doing one mad thing or another and Lestrade had never seen such a look of pure fear on Sherlock's face. Climbing into that tiny space with John’s bleeding body and the threat of death, well, he wasn’t the first poor bastard to be undone by the prospect. Molly was shocked, of course. But Molly only saw the families when they came for identification, after the news was already broken. Molly had never seen the raw impact, the way that hideous change just shatters people heart brain and soul.

Molly had gone off to the hospital. Someone had to take care of Harry.

Something dark and cruciform and very large loomed into the path of his torch.

Lestrade backed away instinctively from the beast. Then the crossbar detached, landing with a thud almost at Lestrade’s feet. Lestrade knew even before he turned the torch on it that it was Sherlock. But the torchlight at least confirmed that he was breathing.

Lestrade flashed his torchbeam through the rain ahead of him. It caught the pale face of a woman with long dark hair, full lips, strong features…wet and bedraggled but still recognizable.

“I think this belongs to you,” said Irene Adler.

Lestrade wanted to look down at him, but he was afraid of being pounced upon. He kept the torch on Irene’s face.

“What did you do to him?”

“Punched his lights out,” Irene said, shaking one hand. “I had to. He was raving. I gather something terrible has happened to John; I can't think of anything else that would do this to him. Was it Kemp? Please tell me it wasn't Kemp." 

"It wasn't," Lestrade said.

"He kept calling me Marie. Do you know who Marie is, Detective Inspector?”

“Thanks for finding him,” Lestrade said.

Irene Adler smiled.

“And now,” Lestrade began, “you’re under arrest—“

Useless. He was already talking to the rain. He’d never find her on a night like this. And bringing Harold Latimer’s murderer to justice was frankly not at the top of his list right now.

“Come on, Sherlock,” he said, dragging Sherlock’s unconscious form up from the wet loam. “I’ll take you back where you belong. You just rest a bit. I've got this.”

*             *             *             *

There was a window at the end of the hallway, wide open. Morning light streamed through it, scattered and spangled by the raindrops still clinging to the panes. The white tile on the walls and the white lino on the floors gleamed with aggressive purity. Sherlock felt exposed, like a nasty dark-winged bug crawling across this pitilessly smooth surface. No cracks to crawl into. Nowhere to hide.

They had told him it was room 311. He had stood in the shop on the first floor for twenty minutes, staring at the flowers. On television people visiting someone in hospital brought flowers. It took him a long time to work up the courage not to do it. They had never done flowers before. It wouldn’t mean anything. He thought he was right about that. It was so hard to be sure.

Reason and logic and the science of deduction. Burnt up in an instant. A lifetime of rational thought and rational action pulverized by the sight of John lying on the ground with a bullet in his leg and blood pouring from the wound.

The bullet went in near the groin and just nicked the femoral artery, the doctor had said. Not severed. Just nicked. Thank God for small favors.

The surgery had taken four hours. It had taken Lestrade the better part of one hour to find him. That was as close an estimate as Sherlock could make from the available data; Lestrade was maddeningly imprecise when it came to matters of time. Sherlock couldn’t be sure exactly when he had recovered consciousness. He could remember being dragged into a tiny shower in a cheap hotel, doused with warm water, dried off—by Lestrade let us hope, and not poor Molly—and fed coffee until the caffeine fought its way through the fog and finally shocked his neurons enough to get them back on line. At which point Lestrade and Molly finally got it through to him that the operation was over and John was in stable condition and it looked like he would make it.

And after that it was perhaps thirty minutes before Sherlock was fit to go among people.

There had been these brief periods of madness before. But he had always attributed them to the powerful chemical stimulants that brought them on. He had never gone mad sober. It terrified him to know it was possible.

He lingered outside the door.

He imagined opening it and facing what he had done.

Sherlock closed his eyes and leaned against the door.

With his ear pressed against the wood he could hear someone’s voice. A woman’s voice, low, singing a simple but not unpleasant tune.

Sherlock turned the handle and pushed the door open a crack.

Through the aperture he could see Harry’s back. She was sitting in a chair near John’s bed, blocking Sherlock’s view of him. She was holding his left hand and singing to him. He could hear the words clearly now, carried on Harry’s low resonant voice.

_Where you go, I will go_

_Where you lodge, I will lodge_

_Your people will be my people_

_And your God my God_

_Where you die, I will die_

_There will I be buried_

The words were from the Book of Ruth. Sherlock had never heard the tune before.

He pushed the door open wider, so he could hear better. The hinges creaked, and Harry stopped.

She turned around. Harry certainly had not had the benefit of a shower. She was wearing everything she’d had on last night including all the Essex flora and fauna that she had crashed through on her way up and down the hill. With an effort, Sherlock stopped himself from itemizing and classifying it, and tried to focus on Harry’s face. She was exhausted. But otherwise it wasn’t exactly what Sherlock had been expecting.

“Sherlock,” she said, pushing the chair back from the bed.

“No—don’t—you don’t have to stop,” Sherlock faltered.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Come and sit down.”

She got up and picked up the room’s other chair. She put it next to the head of the bed, sitting down herself in the one nearer the foot. Sherlock sat in the other chair. Awkwardly, he took John’s hand. It was warm and dry and Sherlock could feel the blood pulsing in his wrist.

John’s eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell with a reassuringly regular motion. They had put an oxygen tube in his nose and a saline drip in his arm. Beneath the sheet of the hospital bed Sherlock could see the contours of the dressing on his wounded thigh. Sherlock felt something stab at him from the back of his brain right into that spot behind his eyes. That strong, beautiful body. Broken so quickly.

“Is he…conscious?” Sherlock said.

“He’s still recovering from the anaesthesia,” Harry replied. “He goes in and out. He’ll be talking to you and then he’ll sort of nod off mid-sentence. He fell asleep while I was singing to him. He’ll probably wake up again soon. That’s the worst of it, coming out of anaesthesia—you can’t make yourself stay alert, but you can’t really get any rest either.”

Sherlock’s throat went dry. But he had to say it.

“Harry, I’m—I’m sorry I—“

Harry shook her head. “It’s all right, Sherlock.”

“It’s not all right. It’s hideous.” He was trying not to let his voice crack, which meant it came out very harsh. “That was the most shameful thing I have ever done.”

He waited for a caustic retort. But Harry just looked on in silence.

“I don’t deserve him," Sherlock said. "I’ve never deserved him.”

Harry’s head finally snapped around to face him.

“You must be furious,” Sherlock said, though the evidence didn’t seem to confirm that.

“Sherlock…” Harry sighed. “Stop thinking about what you deserve or don’t deserve. Brooding on what a terrible person you are doesn’t help _him_ at all.” She closed er eyes and rubbed them with her hands. Then she dropped her hands, and looked at Sherlock in a way he found curiously reassuring and also curiously unbearable.

“After Mary died,” Harry said, speaking the forbidden name quite naturally, “I did a lot of that. I mean I thought, and everyone thought, that I had killed her. The love of John’s life, and my friend.”

Sherlock felt his curiosity coming to life, in spite of everything.

“Oh yes,” Harry said. “She met him through me. You wouldn’t know that of course because he can’t talk about her.”

“No,” Sherlock said, remembering the sheer unreasoning panic the sound of her name had evoked in John only a day ago.

“After the accident I stopped drinking for a little while,” she said. “It didn’t stick; but I was, briefly, stone cold sober. At the time I saw it as a way of punishing myself. And what I regret most about that time is…”

Harry looked down at the floor between her folded hands. Then she fixed Sherlock with a rather startlingly intense gaze.

“I wasn’t there for him,” Harry said. “I was so wrapped up in my own guilt and my own self-loathing that whenever he or Clara or anyone else was around I just tried to crawl away into a corner and die. I made it about _me_ and _my_ pain and _my_ grief and _my_ remorse.”

The tears had come to her eyes.

“I thought about what I deserved instead of what _he_ needed,” Harry said. “He was angry, oh my God, the things he said to me. But he was the one going mad. I should have been there for him and I wasn’t. I thought all I could do was hurt him. To think that you’re so evil that your mere touch will blight the ones you love…it’s just another form of narcissism. And it’s never true.”

She twisted in her chair and lifted her handbag off the back of it. Someone must have found it in Harry’s car. Gregson most likely. He was still going over the scene. Well, he had the blue carbuncle, and he had Kemp, and he had the American, who would most likely turn out to be the biggest prize of all. A man who could do what he had done to an experienced soldier like John was someone to whom guns were intimately familiar and for whom killing had become second nature. Gregson was happy. Why not. Someone should be.

“I have no wish to judge you and no right to do it,” she said. “Loving means failing just as surely as loving means losing. I just…” She sighed. “Was it because I said ‘partner’? Was that what froze you?”

Sherlock gave the matter some thought. 

“It is a terrifying word,” he said. “Once you've had a partner, you can never be single again, can you? But that wasn’t...”

Sherlock sighed. “This will sound mad.”

“What else is new,” Harry replied.

“I thought…I had this moment where I knew that I was being punished for making John watch me die. I thought that…for the balance to be restored…I would have to watch _him_ die. And in my head…” Sherlock shook his head, running his hands through his hair. “In my head, that turned into, _If I am not there to see it, then he won’t die._ That’s what happened. That’s why I ran.”

Harry just nodded.

“Magical thinking,” she said. “The last refuge of the heartbroken.”

They sat there for a moment, thinking about Ryder running through the darkness toward her future.

"If it makes you feel any better," Harry said, "as soon as I got in the ambulance, I put that stupid stone in his hand, and I held it there till they made me let him go. I almost lost the damn thing on the floor of the ambulance."

She shook her head.

"He made it," Sherlock said.

"Yes. But not because of a magic rock."

They both knew it was true, of course. And yet it was curious, once you let something like this into your mind, how hard it was to fully disbelieve. He would have to do some research on this phenomenon, the human reluctance to abandon magic. He had always thought that believing in magic was something for children to grow out of. But he was starting to realize that nobody ever did grow out of it. Not even him. Not completely.

Harry opened her handbag. She unzipped a tiny compartment inside it and extracted something. Small enough to be concealed in her closed hand but, from the way she was holding it, precious and a little bit frightening. It couldn’t be the carbuncle. That was finally safely in the hands of the authorities. How Harry must wish that she had just called the police instead of texting him.

“I want you to have these.”

She opened her hand. Inside, resting on her palm, were a pair of gold bands, a plain one for a man and a beaded one for a woman.

“They were going to be the wedding rings,” Harry said, confirming what Sherlock had already deduced. “I was…well, I was going to be John’s best man. In a manner of speaking. I’ve been carrying them around with me ever since. I didn’t want to get rid of them, but I’m not the person who should have them.” She looked up at Sherlock. “Will you keep them? And someday, when he can stand to talk to you about her, will you give them to him? I hope maybe someday he’ll want something to remember her by, and there isn’t much left.”

Because John had destroyed nearly everything. Sherlock had discovered that, as he searched for something that would tell him anything about the most important relationship in John’s previous life. He had wiped the slate to the best of his ability. He had sent Mary to Coventry.

Sherlock nodded. Harry dropped the rings into his open palm. Sherlock slipped them into his inside pocket.

“Thanks.” Harry stood up. As she passed his chair on her way out, she stopped. On impulse, she put a hand on his shoulder.

It felt rather alien but it didn’t make him flinch. He let it rest there.

“I’m proud to be your family, Sherlock,” she said.

She was gone before he could think of a reply. Everything in his brain seemed to be moving more slowly now. All this emotion gumming up the works.

Sherlock moved his chair closer to the bed, turning it so that he could see John’s face. He took John’s hand.

“You've been awake the whole time,” Sherlock said.

John’s eyes remained closed. But he smiled.

“I was waiting,” John croaked. “God my throat is dry. There’s ice chips and a spoon in that bucket over there.”

Sherlock got up and took the plastic bowl and sat back down. He scooped up a spoonful of ice chips and put it between John’s lips.

“That’s better,” he rasped. His eyes struggled open. “I was thinking, any minute now, Harry will initiate a truly epic arse-kicking, and I will have a front-row seat to the best show in town. And it never happened.”

John broke off into a fit of dry coughing. Sherlock fed him some more ice chips.

John crunched up the last of the ice chips and got his eyes all the way open. He took Sherlock’s hand, pressing it in both of his.

“What I remember,” he said, “is this. Holding your hand. And seeing into you. I mean Harry told me you’d chickened out and buggered off afterward, I did ask her why you weren’t there. I don’t care, Sherlock,” John said, pressing Sherlock’s hand insistently. “Because I’ve seen your heart. I know what’s in it.”

“John—“ Sherlock began, but John waved him off.

“Look at me,” John said.

Sherlock looked into John’s eyes. So many walls shifted, so many mirrors melted into windows, so many shields failed, he could almost feel the floor shaking.

“I love you,” John said.

Sherlock’s throat got so tight that for a moment he couldn’t speak. Instead he kept pressing John’s hand tighter.

“I love you too, John,” Sherlock answered.

For a long time, neither said anything. They sat together, in that white room, in the light of the sun, holding hands, careful not to disturb the mystery of love, this long moment of perfect and inexplicable peace.

END CHAPTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE COME THE GARRIDEBS!
> 
> There are TWL-related reasons why I wanted to do the Three Garridebs at the end of this section; but it was also partly because it was the end of the series and I thought it would make a good conclusion. The thing is that in ACD canon, the mere fact that Holmes actually manifests emotional symptoms after Watson's shot is a huge deal for poor long-suffering Watson. In a slash universe, of course, that barrier has already been broken, so you have to up the ante--which is fine, because the fact that they're lovers when Watson gets shot _does_ up the ante. The emotional stakes are just much higher. So instead of the wound being a "mere scratch" as it is in "Three Garridebs," I made it potentially fatal. Losing the beloved. Ain't nothing bigger than that.
> 
> I knew Sherlock's flight from the ambulance would be a risk. It's the opposite of heroic and it puts him in a light that a lot of readers probably don't want to see him in. But it seemed to me like something that would really happen in that situation. This is the first time Sherlock has ever been aware of his love for someone else. John has had a lot of people he loves die on him--his mother, Mary, no doubt some friends in Afghanistan--but Sherlock hasn't, and he has no idea what to do with the fear and panic that overwhelm him when he contemplates this prospect. Emotions behave in ways peculiar to them; and being smart about everything else in the world doesn't help you understand how emotions work or how to adjust for them. That comes from experience that Sherlock doesn't have. And if you look at the way characters in his universe respond to this, you can see that as shocked as Harry and Lestrade are, they understand his situation, and they understand that he needs help. Even Irene Adler gets it, though as always her 'help' comes in a rather problematic package.
> 
> It was interesting writing Sherlock's point of view for the first time. I have no problem writing him from the outside, but getting into his head was more of a challenge. It's got to be such an odd place.


	7. EPILOGUE: ONE QUARTET

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here it is. The epilogue. The end of this story, and the end of the series.
> 
> For now, let me say two things: one, thanks to everyone who has been reading along with me during my Summer of Sherlock, it has been so much fun to write these stories, and two, I had planned this epilogue long before I knew this, but tumblr tells me that today is Martin Freeman's birthday. So happy birthday, Dr. Watson. Have an epilogue.
> 
> thanks for reading, everyone!  
> ***  
> October 31, 2013: I didn't know this when I wrote the epilogue, but someone has actually made a Johnlock songvid out of [Gone, Gone, Gone.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqic38JexX0) It's, you know, sad. But worth a look.

EPILOGUE: ONE QUARTET

After the mad weather that April, everyone was braced for a roasting summer; but June proved to be surprisingly temperate. Mild blue skies and sunny days, broken up of course with the rain that it seemed no climate change would shift. The meterologists seemed ill at ease, almost mistrustful of this unexpected clemency.

The morning sun was merciful all the same, pouring itself generously through Molly’s bedroom windows. She liked, now, to leave the blinds up a bit when they went to bed, so that the light would wake her just before the alarm went off. She would lie there quite still, eyes closed, gradually becoming aware of the weight of Greg’s arm across her chest, the whisper of his breath on the back of her neck. She wondered, sometimes, what their bodies did while they were sleeping. Whether, once consciousness was safely snowed under, their limbs might just go on twining, their mouths move blindly toward each other.

Then she would open her eyes and look at Greg’s face. She always woke first. Greg dropped asleep like a log at night and had to be jolted awake in the morning. Age, he said; but Molly envied him his easy entry into sleep, the way he could just shake the day’s worries off along with his clothes. She hoped it might be something she could learn.

So many mornings now she’d watched the early light travel across his face, get caught in his hair, lighten his eyelashes so that they looked almost white. She couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of it.

There was that odd little introductory click, and her alarm clock began to sing.

 _Woke up it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I knew_ …

Lestrade groaned, and pulled the pillow over his head.

Molly laughed and snatched it away. This, too, they had been doing more or less every morning for the past six weeks. Well, every morning they woke up at her place, which was most of them. Greg’s apartment was smaller and a little grim, though it had a much better television. Their overnights there were usually unplanned. Molly had, once or twice, turned up at St. Bart’s wearing the same thing she’d worn the night before. And the funny thing was nobody noticed. Well, Sherlock did, of course; but he’d just give her a look and say no more about it.

Lestrade rolled over, hit the snooze button a smart tap, and then rolled back to face her. He threw the covers back. It was still there, Molly’s urge to snatch at the sheet and cover herself up; but it was getting weaker.

“Looks like another fine day,” Lestrade said.

Molly slipped a hand along the back of his neck, drawing herself closer to him.

“Beautiful,” she said, looking into his eyes.

 “Molly Hooper,” he said, softly. “I don’t know what you see in me.”

Molly stroked his back. “You’ll catch on eventually.”

He smiled, then stretched up to look out the window.

“Yes,” he said, rather gloomily. “It’s a beautiful day to get sacked.”

Molly tugged him back into the bed. “You’re not going to be sacked. They’ve had six weeks, if they were going to sack you they’d have done it by now.”

“The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, Molly,” Lestrade said. “And the Moran affair is still gumming up the works. They’d have had me on the spit in the Assistant Commissioner’s office weeks ago only they had to get in a new one after old Stoker was finally indicted.”

Lestrade slipped out of bed. Molly watched the light race down his bare back as he stretched and yawned. He did it on purpose, right where the sun would hit him in all the right spots. Molly didn’t tease him about it. She was glad he was finally starting to believe her when she told him how much she loved to look at him.

He scooped a bath towel off the floor and looked over his shoulder. “Coming?”

Molly nodded, and slid out of bed.

They had started showering together just out of necessity; one bathroom, two jobs to get to early in the morning. And also, though Lestrade wouldn’t admit this, because he still didn’t feel completely safe when he was alone in a shower. She hadn’t liked the idea at first. Now she looked forward to it.

Lestrade turned the taps and adjusted the showerhead. He jumped under the falling water, then beckoned her in.

She put her arms around his neck. He put an arm around her waist and drew her close.

“They can sack me all they want,” Lestrade said, as she watched the water trickling down his face. “Taking up that case was the right thing to do and I for one will never be sorry we did it.”

“Neither will I.”

She tasted the running water along with his mouth, wet and cool and faintly mineral. He made everything different, Molly thought. Even water has a taste now.

Breakfast in the garden, maybe, she thought. It was such a nice day. The hyacinths were past their peak, but there would be next spring. She had replanted them all. As long as she lived in that apartment—and who knew, now, how long that would be—there would be hyacinths in that garden. And next season, if she could get Greg to help her plant it, a lilac bush.

*          *          *          *

John stepped gingerly out of the shower. Though the stitches had all disintegrated weeks ago, his body was still afraid of tearing them. Everyone told him he was healing beautifully. John had to admit that if he had been his own patient he would have been quite happy with his progress. He just couldn’t get over the idea that those muscles would never again be quite trustworthy.

Slipping on his dressing gown, he walked out to the kitchen. Sherlock was slouched in a chair, shoveling muesli into his mouth with one hand and adjusting the heat of a Bunsen burner with the other. He glanced at John, grunted a semi-greeting, and then swore as one of his fingers came into brief contact with the burner ring.

“Whose fate is hanging in the balance this time?” John asked, opening the fridge. There was milk in it, and it was even still fresh. There was also a vial of clotted blood, three petri dishes, and a severed thumb, but who was counting.

“It’s not important,” Sherlock mumbled, scooping in another mouthful. “But Harry says the case might go to trial today, and since I am an _expert_ witness I thought it would be polite to have something to say when I turn up.”

“You know, Harry always says—“

Sherlock waved a hand at him. “Scientific investigation is never wasted effort, John.”

John put his breakfast together and ate it standing up, leaning against the counter, because he could. It was good to see Sherlock working, even if it was only on one of Harry’s cases. At first John had found Sherlock’s determination to nurse him back to health very touching; but unfortunately Sherlock was as obsessive about it as he was about all his other pursuits. The first week it was wonderful. The second week it became irritating. The third week it was insufferable. At the beginning of week four they’d had a nice bracing row over it, and now things were mostly back to normal. Normal for now. Which meant there were these little things that John would notice sometimes. Milk in the fridge. Dirty laundry piled in a corner mysteriously reappearing clean and folded in the wardrobe. Food being cooked, in the kitchen, and Harry nowhere in sight. And of course the violin continued.

While John was still in hospital, Sherlock had gone out to the flat and brought back the violin. In those first days when he was still hooked up to tubes, Sherlock improvising on the violin was just about the only thing John could enjoy. Sherlock played it for him every night now. Never the same music twice. Although John could detect a kind of continuity, and these performances all did sound vaguely familiar.  

His mobile rang. It was Harry.

John put it on speaker, in the center of the table, and sat down. Sherlock folded his arms and waited.

“Harry.”

“John. Listen, you can tell Sherlock not to bother, they’ve settled. Wankers.”

Sherlock himself remained silent. He contented himself with giving John a look that made him nearly explode with stifled laughter.

“Well that’s good news, isn’t it, Harry?” John ventured.

“For the client,” Harry said.

Poor Harry. Absolutely spoiling for a fight and nobody wanted to give her one.

It was all the fault of Kemp and his American colleague. John Winter a.k.a ‘Killer’ Evans, in addition to being an American citizen, was wanted in both England and the States for so many things that it would be a while before his trial was sorted out. Paul Kemp, while he had been raised and indeed employed as an ‘interrogator’ in Tunisia, was born on English soil, and so his trial was going ahead immediately. Watching the preparations had given Harry courtroom fever. She wasn’t qualified yet in criminal law, but she had started doing some litigation work. For the low fees she was charging and the small amounts that were at stake, she was a much better lawyer than anyone on the other side was ever expecting. She had won her first two court cases so handily, and with so much fawning coverage in the Sherlock-addicted tabloids, that no one was interested in becoming her third opponent. They settled instead, to avoid the trouncing and the bad publicity. Which was, as Harry said, good for the clients; but frustrating for her.

“Anyway, listen, about tonight,” Harry said.

“Yes?” John said, wishing he could recover the phone and disable the speaker without Sherlock noticing.

“Lestrade just sent the set list,” she said.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. John closed his eyes. He’d put off bringing this up, and now he’d left it too late.

“He…well, look, he really wants to do [‘Thunder Road.’”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMB3M43AEpc&list=PLhYk12c2AbejvEBEZ8AqV0oqvVbnPtvrQ)

John sat very still.

“I can probably talk him out of it,” Harry went on, “but I’m not sure I can do it without telling him _why_.”

John took a deep breath. He put his hand down on the table, palm up. Sherlock reached over and laid his hand on top of John’s. 

“It’s all right, Harry,” John said, carefully. “Let him do it. I’ll be all right.”

Sherlock squeezed his hand tighter.

“It is one of the greatest songs ever written,” Harry said, apologetically. “You can’t blame him.”

“No, I can’t,” John said. “Do you want to get lunch? I’ve got this appointment at Bart’s and then I thought I would pop down and see Bertie, but after—“

“I’d love to, John, but alas there’s no rest for the wicked. I’ve got new client meetings all afternoon. But I’ll see you tonight.”

She hung up. Sherlock waited.

“It was our song,” John said.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, simply. He snagged John’s mobile with his other hand and pulled up the stopwatch app. He pressed a key and it beeped.

John closed his eyes. Sherlock kept hold of his hand. John tried to remember where he and Mary had been when they’d first heard it together.

They’d been standing together on a balcony. The music had drifted in from behind them. On a balcony overlooking…yes. It was at that flat of Harry and Clara’s, the first place they’d lived in together. They’d had some friends in to celebrate the move. And John, who disliked all of Clara’s friends and many of Harry’s, and Mary, who smoked, had found themselves on that little balcony overlooking the river. It was one of those long summer evenings, where the light lingers for what seems like forever. Mary closed her eyes and turned her face into the breeze. The fringe of blonde hair that usually fell in her eyes lifted, and her mouth curved in a kind of dreaming smile, and suddenly a face that he had seen a hundred times struck him as miraculous and strange. And a song that he’d never particularly cared about, drifting in from the apartment, seemed to come home to the two of them at this moment. _The screen door slams…Mary’s dress waves…like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays…_

He had wanted to kiss her then. But something had made him shy. That should have been his first clue. Since the age of fourteen it had been see a girl, fancy her, go right up to her and give it your best. With Mary it took him forever to work up the nerve to ask her out on a proper date. They went to dinner and they wound up in a karaoke bar and she got up and sang that song. And when she got to, _you ain’t no beauty, but hey, you’re all right,_ she was looking right at John, with that devilish little smile he would come to love so much.

“Ten minutes, John,” Sherlock said quietly.

John folded the memory up and put it away. He opened his eyes. Sherlock pressed his hand once more, then let go.

This was something John’s therapist had suggested soon after he first told her about Coventry. Try to think about Mary for ten minutes a day. Time it and enforce the limit. Knowing it could only last ten minutes might make it possible to visit those memories. You’ll know that no matter how painful it might be, it won’t last long enough to do you any real harm.

John found that he could do it—as long as Sherlock was touching him, and as long as his eyes were closed. Sherlock kept the time for him. He never asked questions afterward. Slowly, John accumulated a little store of memories that he could safely bring out to show. Slowly, John began to tell Sherlock about her. It was odd that although Sherlock still pretended to be jealous of any living woman that John looked at, he didn’t seem worried by Mary.

Sherlock slid the mobile back to John. “Harry’s concern about the presence of this song on the set list,” he observed, “suggests that she expects you to be in attendance at this _performance_.” Sherlock pronounced the word with a little shiver of contempt. “Which I find astonishing in view of our plans to spend this evening quietly, or not quietly as the case may be, at home.”

John sighed. “I know. I know, but this may be the only time Lestrade’s band ever plays any venue other than Molly’s apartment and…somehow I just couldn’t refuse him, Sherlock. He’s so excited, it would feel like kicking a puppy.”

Sherlock couldn’t resist a little bark of derisive laughter.

“It’s your own fault,” John retorted.

And it was. One morning when Sherlock and Harry and Molly and Lestrade were hanging around in John’s hospital room, Lestrade had mentioned in passing the musical ambitions of his misspent youth. Sherlock had brusquely informed Lestrade, much to the surprise of everyone present, that this unfulfilled musical yearning did not by any means make him special. One could staff a small rock band, he had continued, with the people in this room alone. Molly’s spatulate finger ends and unusually wide handspan given her delicate bone structure indicated years spent learning classical piano, and Harry’s habit of beating out complex rhythms on tables with pens, knives, and other long and narrow objects derived from the years she’d spent taking out her adolescent frustrations on a drum set.

When John came back to the room he found Molly, Harry, and Lestrade eagerly debating possible names for the band they had just formed. Sherlock looked both astonished and mortified. John had rather liked Harry’s suggestion--“Molly and the Geriatrics”--but that had been vetoed by Lestrade. They were still in search of both a bass player (preferably someone with a van) and a name.

“I did try to put Lestrade off, but he looked so very hurt,” John said. And, with an anticipatory wince, “I told him we would both go.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Surely you have not condemned _me_ to this musical purgatory.”

“He really wanted you to be there,” John said.

Sherlock emitted a howl of impatience and refusal.

“They’ve only got the place between six and eight—there’s a _real_ band coming on after, you know—so we’ll still have plenty of time for a quiet evening at home. It’s a pub, they serve food,” John rattled on. “We’ll get a dinner out of it, if nothing else.”

“Perhaps you can eat while you are being musically assaulted,” Sherlock replied. “I cannot.”

“Come on,” John said, with what he hoped was a disarming smile. “It’s been six weeks; what’s another two hours?”

Sherlock sat and fumed. But John sensed that he was giving in.

“I will go,” Sherlock said. “For you. But I cannot possibly stand two full hours of bad music badly played. You must allow me to disappear from time to time.”

John stood up. “Don’t I always?”

Sherlock put out the flame in the burner. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come.”

“Yes,” John said.

He leaned over and kissed Sherlock briefly, then pulled on his jacket and walked out. The signs were good. All the signs were good. John just wasn’t sure, if it did happen to be bad news, exactly what Sherlock might do; and his doctor had enough to put up with.

It wasn’t much fun, at first, going back to Bart’s as a patient. But it was good for him in a way to be reminded of how different everything had been then. Wounded, nightmare-plagued, adrift in London with no friends to speak of and no family he was still speaking to, with nothing to do but eat bad food made by someone else and drink in the evenings while staring at a blank computer screen. _Nothing happens to me_. His body might think at moments that it had gone back in time, but the rest of him was so very far away from that life. No matter what, he would never be in _that_ place again.

John sat in the examination room, waiting for his doctor, looking at his mobile. He had only just finished posting “The Adventure of the Hyacinth Girl.” There had been so many negotiations with so many people. Sherlock had insisted that John suppress Marie’s real identity; she was in the story as Madame Sosotris, and there was no mention of her connection to Sherlock. Revealing Irene Adler’s continued existence, meanwhile, was liable to be extremely dangerous to her; and though John still couldn’t understand why everyone made exceptions for Irene Adler, he agreed to retain the Vivien alias throughout. He had also drawn a veil over Sherlock’s fit of madness by the ambulance. Sherlock was highly annoyed by the omission. Always trying to make me a hero, Sherlock had complained. No, John told him. You make yourself a hero. I just don’t want every criminal mastermind left in London to know what happens to you once someone puts a bullet into me.

The resulting tale was a bit of a mess. Nevertheless, people seemed to be reading it. Nobody could ever get enough of Sherlock.

“Dr. Watson!” called a voice from the doorway. “How’s the birthday boy?”

John was always taken surprise, somehow, by the Northern accent, no matter how often he heard it. And by the cheerfulness, which seemed ill-sorted with his close-cut hair, grim aspect, and aggressively sculpted body. All the same, John liked this doctor. He was sympathetic, but brutally frank, and with very little time for the bedside-manner tricks they were all taught. He had large, strong, and very confident hands, and was absolutely impossible to embarrass.

“Let’s hope for many happy returns, shall we?”

Some things never changed. First person to mention John’s birthday all day and it had to be the semi-stranger who was about to probe him.

“Up you go, Dr. Watson, and let’s see the damage.”

John took off his trousers and pants and pushed himself up onto the examination table. The doctor knew better than to try making chit-chat at this moment. John had been undergoing examinations like this once a week since he left hospital, and he was over the embarrassment; but this time he couldn’t help tensing up.

“Right,” the doctor murmured to himself, peering closely at the wound scar, and then palpating the surrounding area rather roughly. “Does this hurt? I mean obviously I’m poking my great bony fingers into your flesh, but does it hurt in any kind of medically significant way?”

“No,” John said.

“Good,” said the doctor to himself, as he continued testing the surrounding muscles. “All right, let’s see you walk.”

John took a couple of turns around the examination room.

“Good good good,” said the doctor. “On with the togs then.”

John dressed himself hurriedly, then perched himself anxiously on the exam table.

“Well, Dr. Watson,” said the doctor. “The wound’s healed well, and the affected muscles appear to be sound. You may feel some residual tightness for a while, from the scarring, during strenuous activity. But all in all…”

The doctor looked up with a smile that made him somehow both irrepressibly charming and irretrievably goofy.

“You’re healed,” he said. “You can resume all normal activities.”

John hadn’t realized, until he stopped, that he had been actually holding his breath.

“All normal activities,” John said, with a laugh of relief.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Running, jumping, tennis, football, skydiving, swimming the Channel, whatever it was you did before, you can go back to doing it now.”

“And…and sex?” John said, just wanting to hear it.

“Is sex a normal activity for you?”

“Yes…yes it is rather.”

“You lucky devil,” said the doctor with a smile. “Well by all means resume it then.”

“Thank you,” John said, looking up at him and wishing his eyes weren’t tearing up. “Thank you so much, doctor.”

The doctor smiled at him. “You’re welcome, doctor.”

John hoped off the table, collected his things, and headed toward the door.

“Dr. Watson,” said the doctor.

John turned around.

“Try to stay out of gunfights,” said the doctor. “Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only person in the world who would miss you.”

John tried to think of an answer. He couldn’t, so he just waved and left.

He had fired off the text before he even reached the elevator. _All clear. Resume normal activities. All of them. Where are you? JW._

*          *          *

“Was that your phone?”

Sherlock leaned back against the leather upholstery and sighed. “Yes.”

Anthea said, “You can answer it, you know.”

The tinted windows in the back of the car made it impossible to distinguish much outside; but it didn’t much matter. Sherlock would have to evaluate the situation as it unfolded. It was always hard to know how seriously to take Mycroft. It was so difficult to be properly terrified of someone who had cried over E.T.’s death for an entire afternoon. Curiously, Mycroft’s near-total indifference to actual people was paired with a hypersensitivity to the sufferings of fictional characters.

But then there was the fall.

Probably Sherlock would come out of this alive. Anthea was rather a pet of Mycroft’s and was not typically called upon for the _very_ dirtiest of jobs. And Sherlock had always known that Mycroft’s silence would someday end.

Sherlock took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the text John had just sent.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Anthea said, politely.

“No,” Sherlock answered, putting the phone away. “Why ruin his day?”

The car stopped moving. They were in an underground car park; that much he knew before the door locks opened. Sherlock popped the rear door, got out of the car, and recognized the place immediately. They were underneath the Diogenes Club.

Anthea walked toward the unmarked door that led to the hidden stairway. Sherlock followed her. She swiped a card and pulled the door open, stepping back to let Sherlock go through.

“Aren’t you coming?” he said. “Oh—that’s right—the Digoenes Club doesn’t admit women.” He stepped through the door and turned around for a last look at Anthea’s patented Mona Lisa smile. “Doesn’t it bother at all you that your employer, while to all intents and appearances a grown man, conducts so much of his business in a secret clubhouse with a sign on the door reading _no girls allowed_?”

Anthea dropped the door. It closed with a bang.

The door at the top of the stairway opened, apparently of its own accord.

It was a room like all the others at the Diogenes Club, except for that separate entrance, and for the fact that it was reserved specially for the use of Mycroft Holmes and his guests. Mycroft sat in an oversized leather armchair, nursing a whisky and soda. Sherlock stood with his hands in his pockets and waited.

“Do sit down, Sherlock,” said Mycroft.

“Thanks, I’ll stand,” Sherlock replied. “I won’t stay long.”

“As I don’t enjoy your company any more than you enjoy mine, I may as well come straight to the point,” Mycroft said.

He lifted a long, white, folded document from the end table on which the drink was resting.

“I was astonished to receive, along with my usual post, this amazing document. It appears that someone involved in prosecuting a Mr. Paul Kemp has had the audacity to issue _me_ a subpoena.”

“Dear me,” said Sherlock.

“What on earth could have imparted to him the idea that I would know anything about this sordid escapade?”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, humbly. “You’re ever so much cleverer than I am, Mycroft. I’m sure you can deduce the answer for yourself.”

“Evidently fame has blunted your powers of perception,” Mycroft said, with that specially crisp intonation Mycroft always adopted in his bitchier moods. “I should have thought you would have understood that my leaving you alive and free to you pursue your little hobby was conditional on your never exposing me and _my_ work to the tender mercies of your adoring public.”

Sherlock snorted. “And I should have thought that _you_ might assume, after the arrest of Sebastian Moran, that we should have nothing more to say to each other for the rest of our natural lives. You will get no help from me, Mycroft.”

And there it went, the self-control. Ah well. Forge on.

“Let the law drag you out of the web and into the sunlight. It’ll do you good, assuming you don’t just crumble into dust the moment the first sunbeam strikes you.”

Mycroft seemed to have a little difficulty with the next swallow of his drink.

“I don’t think you fully understand the delicacy of my position,” Mycroft said.

Sherlock pulled over a hardbacked chair. He crouched in it, keeping his eyes level with Mycroft’s.

“Oh, I do, Mycroft,” Sherlock said quietly. “I do. You have your masters and they have theirs and on and on and not one of them wants this case tried. If it were just a little diplomatic cock-up involving Greek artifacts this case would just be a tempest in a teacup but oh, dear, how _very_ unlucky that Ryder’s father happens to be suffering from something which the tabloids are already calling Kingfisher Syndrome. And how _very_ unlucky that John’s blogging about this syndrome has emboldened other veterans of our Afghan wars who have similar symptoms to come forward, and it is really even more unfortunate that so many of them have reported that their families and carers were offered…shall I call it a financial incentive, or shall I just say ‘bribe?’”

Mycroft looked away.

“Bribe. Bribe,” he murmured. “Such a satisfying word. Sounds so Anglo-Saxon, just like all the other dirty words. So. The Army has been bribing people like Lily Kingfisher to keep their affected relatives out of sight; but that’s not going to work any more. So really, Mycroft, you can tell your masters that the damage is done. The world will know, very soon, that there was some sort of internationally banned weapon used by British troops in Afghanistan which is killing the veterans who deployed it. We don’t know what exactly it was; but we will one day. The only question in _my_ mind is whether the fallout that wrecked Kingfisher’s body was nuclear or chemical. Was it chemical? It seems nasty enough.”

The bottom of the tumbler struck the end table with unusual force.

“I will _not_ testify,” Mycroft shouted.

Look who was losing control.

“You _will_ ,” Sherlock snapped. “You will because it’s your information that establishes that Latimer and Kemp stole the carbuncle on behalf of Jonathan Winter, who had a dying and credulous American billionaire ready to buy it from him. They can’t build the case against Kemp without that information and I am very sorry to inconvenience you, Mycroft, but the man who killed Sophia Kratides and would have killed Lestrade _and_ Marie _will_ go to prison.”

Mycroft sprang from his chair. “If you do not make that _thing_ go away,” he shouted, pointing with a quivering finger at the subpoena, “then I refuse to protect you, ever again.”

“So be it!” Sherlock shouted, clenching his hands because they were itching to slap Mycroft’s supercilious face. “I never asked for your protection! I nearly _died_ of your protection!”

“Because you _never listen!_ ” Mycroft’s face was red with rage and Sherlock saw veins in his neck now that he wouldn’t have thought Mycroft even had. “You can distinguish a hundred and twenty-eight varieties of tobacco ash and you cannot figure out the benefits of once in a great while doing what you are bloody well told!”

Sherlock took a good look at that distorted face and chose the exact spot at which he wanted his right fist to strike it.

“Sherlock,” said a voice from the doorway. “Use your words, please.”

It was Marie. Of course it was Marie. She had left off the fortune-teller drag and was wearing a simple black dress and eminently sensible shoes. She came forward, meeting Mycroft’s outraged stare with a smile.

“I know so well how maddening your brother is. But the brain inside that skull is truly one of a kind and I would not have you scramble it.”

 “How did you even get in here?” Mycroft demanded. “Women aren’t allowed—“

Marie sat down in the armchair Mycroft had so recently occupied. “Women certainly are allowed in the Diogenes Club. You simply never see them. Who do you think cleans up after you?”

Marie took a sip of Mycroft’s drink. She grimaced as she gulped it down.

“You are mixing these stronger and stronger, Mycroft. You are under too much stress, I think. Perhaps it is time for a career change.”

“Get out of my chair.” Mycroft was suddenly cold again.

“I do not think I will,” Marie answered. “But there are two other chairs in this room and I beg you both to take them. I will waste no time appealing to your better nature, Mycroft, which I know you do not have, or to your affection for me, which is certainly by now long dead. I will say only this: these years we have worked together, I have opened many doors for you. And if you cannot learn to live with your brother, Mycroft, then I will say the magic word and all of those doors will close. And you will be left outside and helpless in the dark--you and all those other top-secret spymasters who speak only the European languages they were taught at their posh schools.”

Sherlock drew over the second hardbacked chair and set it down with a thump on the floor near Mycroft.

He glared at them both; but he sat down. Sherlock took the other.

“Now,” Marie said. “The cards inform me that brotherly love is too much to hope for at this time. What we will divine today is how the two of you will learn to let each other alone.”

*          *          *         

With her briefcase under one arm and a cup of coffee in one hand, Harry pushed open the door with her hips. The settlement conference on her second case had gone on too long, and now she was late for her four o’clock. She hurried past the empty desk in the reception area, reminding herself to hire an actual receptionist someday. She’d put it off because it would mean a serious phone and another computer and office supplies and it was just more capital than she felt safe laying out at this time. This Sherlock craze would not last forever and there was a limit to how high his rising tide would lift Harry’s own little boat.

She left the office door ajar, dropped the briefcase to the floor, threw herself into the chair, and gulped the coffee as fast as she dared.

All too soon, the four o’clock was rapping on the glass of the door to reception.

“Come in,” Harry called. “It’s open.”

Normally she’d have gone out to greet the client, but it was more important, she thought, to try to get the office in some kind of order. Stacks of paper exploding everywhere, the filing was just too much to keep up with. She took a last look around, decided it was a lost cause, and arranged herself in the chair in what she hoped was a dignified and confidence-inspiring posture.

And then she looked up. And there she was. Irene Adler, large as life, in a demure but form-fitting little black dress, black high-heeled pumps, and a little round black hat complete with a veil, which she was drawing back very prettily with both gloved hands. With the red lips and the dark lashes and the bold as brass stare, she looked as if she was on her way to a screen test for a reboot of _The Maltese Falcon._

Irene stepped forward, pushing the door shut behind her. Harry rose from the chair and pulled out her mobile.

Irene Adler smiled. “You’re _not_ calling the police,” she said, in that maddeningly insinuating voice.

“I will if you come one step closer.”

Irene sat down on the edge of the desk, supporting herself with one hand and crossing one leg over the other.  Harry resumed her seat, pushed it all the way back into the wall, and did her best not to look at Irene’s legs.  

“Don’t say you’re surprised,” Irene said.

“I certainly am,” Harry replied. “The blue carbuncle is locked up, Sophia is unfortunately beyond help, Latimer is as dead as you could want him to be, and Kemp and Winter are in custody, so I cannot _imagine_ what you want from me unless you have finally decided to make out a will.”

“I don’t need a will,” Irene said. She sat up and took a compact mirror out of her tiny beaded black purse. “I’m already dead.”

She checked her makeup in the tiny round mirror, turning her face as she powdered her nose so that Harry could see all the angles.

“Oh _stop_ it,” Harry snapped. “If you came here to play Bogart and Bacall you can get the hell out.”

The compact snapped shut. Irene returned it to the purse, and then went to sit primly in the client chair.

Harry said, “What do you want?”

“I wanted to see you again,” Irene said.

“No,” Harry said.

“Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

“Because I have two brain cells. What do you want?”

Irene took her time before answering.

“I could make something up,” she said. “Some intrigue that would justify my presence here that would keep you talking to me for a little while. But I think instead I’ll just say goodbye.”

Irene rose from her chair, the purse dangling sadly from one hand.

“Honesty,” Harry said. “The most devastating ruse of all.”

“Oh _come off it,_ Harry Watson!” Irene snapped, furious. “You want to pace yourself. If you’re this self-righteous after six months sober, what _will_ become of you in ten years’ time?”

“You slept with Clara,” Harry said.

This seemed to throw her. “I beg your pardon?”

“You were all in the Cornelius Management Group together,” Harry said, sweeping an arm through the air as if she could just waft Irene out of the room. “One big happy fucked-up family. Of course you slept with her. She was there, she was beautiful, she loved being a bad girl, oh she loved it _so much_ , and by God she was just your type. Well what does it matter. You weren’t the first last or only.”

“Well,” Irene said. “Slept with is perhaps the wrong term for it. But I do know what she liked.”

“Congratulations,” Harry bit off. “I was with her for nine years, I’m still trying to work out what she wanted.”

“Oh,” Irene said with a smile. “You must understand, Harry, that what you like and what you want can be two completely different things. Indeed they almost always are.”

Irene folded her arms and leaned back in the chair, giving Harry one of those unsettling assessing looks.

“You _want_ a nice stable committed relationship full of mutual respect and trust and so many other tediously normal things,” said Irene. “But if that was what you _liked_ , you’d never have looked twice at Clara.”

“I fell in love with Clara nine years ago in another lifetime,” Harry said. “Do not think for a moment that I would have signed up for _that_ adventure if I’d been sober.”

Irene leaned forward, fingertips lightly touching the edge of the desk.

“I wonder,” Irene said, slowly, searching Harry’s face with those large bright eyes. “I came here, at some risk to myself, just because I do wonder.”

“What do you want, Irene?” Harry repeated.

Irene smiled at her. “What do you think?”

Harry waited a few moments. But her stubborn impression that Irene Adler was in fact making her an indecent proposal persisted.

“I think not,” Harry finally said.

Irene drew back, royally displeased.

“Because I slept with _Clara_?” Irene said, pronouncing the name with a pungent contempt that surprised even Harry.

“No,” Harry answered. “Because you slept with Ryder.”

 Irene’s expression hardened.

“Sophia worked for me, Harry,” Irene said. “It’s not as if it was a monogamous relationship.”

“That’s completely different,” Harry retorted. “That was business. This is _very_ personal. Ryder came to you for help saving Sophia and you told her fine, I’ll help you, but there’s a price,” Harry said, surprised at how much anger she could still feel on behalf of a woman who had fully intended to slit her throat. “And she played your games with you and I’m sure you enjoyed them and I’m also sure you were documenting all of them. If Sophia had lived you would have shown her the evidence. _That’s_ how you were going to get her.”

Since Harry had mentioned Sophia’s name, Irene had gone very quiet.

“You went after Sophia and she rejected you,” Harry said. “Instead she made her big noble stand in the name of true love. And you’re trying to tell me that if you showed Sophia that while she was being starved in that house of pain Ryder was frolicking with you in that _room_ , she wouldn’t have _cared_?”

Irene looked down at her hands. The delicate bag made them seem larger. Harry wondered what Irene had been like at sixteen or seventeen, when she was doing all that reading.

“It would have broken her,” Harry said. “Sophia might have come to you in the end. But she’d never have been the same. And Ryder of course would have been devastated, but you never cared about her. To you, Ryder Kingfisher was only ever a tool to be used.”

Irene looked up at her. She was no longer smiling. And she wasn’t going to try to deny it. A kind of honesty, in a way.

“Well,” Irene said. “It doesn’t matter now, does it. I hope Sophia’s in a place where there are no more games to play. I hope she’s happy there.”

So this was what Irene Adler sounded like when she told the truth.

“I hope so too,” Harry answered.

“You hope,” Irene echoed. “You don’t believe.”

Harry lifted her hands, thought about things to say, let her hands drift through the air and back to the top of her desk.

But Irene was still looking at her as if she expected something. Harry tried again.

“For reasons not at all interesting to you,” Harry finally said, “I have spent some time thinking about whether I really acknowledge the existence of a higher power. I could only get as far as this: I didn’t save myself. I couldn’t. I don’t think anyone can. Something drives us to save each other. I don’t believe in heaven,” Harry said, as her voice got heavier. “Or hell, except for the ones we make for each other on earth. But I believe that there is _some_ force that draws our wretched little hearts and souls toward something better. The church calls it a higher power. The poets mostly call it love.”

There were tears trembling in Irene’s eyes. Harry knew she should be steeling herself against them. But they did seem so real.

“There is no such thing as the state,” Irene said softly, crossing in front of the desk. “And no one exists alone.”

Harry watched Irene move around the desk toward her. Harry rose from the chair; but she seemed curiously unable to tell Irene to stop moving toward her.

Instead, irresistibly drawn into the game, Harry continued the quotation. “Hunger allows no choice to the citizens or the police.”

Irene was quite close now. Harry could see the light reflecting in Irene’s blue irises. Irene lifted a hand, slowly and gently, toward Harry’s face.

“We must love one another or die,” Irene murmured.

Harry grapsed Irene’s hand in midair,  before it could touch her.

“Now, you see,” Harry said, “this would be a beautiful moment if there wasn’t that little voice in my head telling me that somewhere in _your_ head you’re punching the air and yelling, ‘W. H. Auden for the win!’ ”

“Go to hell, Harry,” Irene snarled.

Irene tried to snatch her hand back, but Harry kept it there.

“All _I_ want from you,” Harry demanded, grasping Irene’s hand tighter, “is to know why you were there. What were you _doing_ in that ridiculous chapel in the middle of the night?”

“I was looking for _you_!” Irene shouted.

Harry dropped Irene’s hand in surprise. Irene inspected it for damage.

“You mean you were looking for that fucking stone,” Harry said.

“Yes, I was looking for the fucking stone, Harry. But I was also looking for you. I saw Ryder get into your car and I knew where she was headed and I got out there as fast as I could.”

Harry turned around and leaned on the desk, thinking. Irene sat on the edge of the desk and laughed.

“The boys were so dramatic, parachuting in for the rescue,” Irene said. “I’d been watching you from the trees ever since you reached the chapel.”

“And you just let all that go on,” Harry said bitterly.

“Oh but it was _fascinating_ , Harry,” Irene said. “I did so want to see how it would end. And I was almost sure you’d win.”

And that was all Harry could ever be to Irene Adler. A source of amusement.

“Leave,” Harry said.

“I will leave,” Irene said, “if you can tell me, with a straight face, that there isn’t just a _tiny_ little piece of you that wants me to stay.”

Harry knew better than to try. Irene saw it and smiled.

“Well Harry,” Irene said, picking an invisible piece of lint of the shoulder of Harry’s suit jacket, and while she was at it smoothing out the lapel. “For once, right now, we want the same thing.”

“I’m a lawyer, Irene,” Harry said, now beginning to feel rather desperate. “You’re a master criminal. I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you and as John will tell you, I can’t throw anything very far. It’s not happening.”

“Not often,” Irene said. Harry could feel the warmth of Irene’s breath on her face now. “But it doesn’t need to. You did agree, on our first date, that it’s better to burn than to marry.” Irene’s voice had dropped to a murmur. Her hand traveled lightly up one side of Harry’s neck and into her hair. “Once is enough. Don’t you think? Just once. Just to find out how brightly we burn.”

Irene bent to murmur into Harry's ear. Harry drew back. Irene accepted this philosophically.

"Once," Irene repeated. "And then we'll never see each other again. How much harm could it do?"

Once, Harry thought, staring into those opaque blue eyes. When in her life had she ever been able to try anything just _once._

Harry reached with one hand for the mobile. Irene’s hand shot out and grasped hers. They stood that way, looking at each other, for what seemed like a long time.

*          *          *          *

You have spent some time in that room yourself, Marie had said. Righter than she knew, John thought. Because the room in which Albert Kingfisher was convalescing looked exactly like the room in which John had recovered from his first shooting. The nondescript brown carpet, the beige walls, the hospital-issue everything.

Kingfisher was standing by the window, one hand on the sill, the other dangling limp at his side. He could stand now, and walk for short distances. Crossing a room was a major effort. His skin was still very pale, and—despite the most fantastically concocted ointments either orthodox or alternative medicine could provide—scaly. His hair was still white; nothing would change that. But his eyes were clear, and he did look twenty years younger. And he could speak when he chose.

Sometimes he didn’t choose.

“Hello, Bertie,” John said.

A brief smile flickered.

“Hello, John.” Kingfisher turned to look out the window. “Nice day.”

John crossed the room to stand by him, looking out the same window. The walls of the building opposite, painted violet by a sun just beginning to think about setting.

“How are you feeling?” John said, after a long silence.

“Not too bad.”

Most of their conversations were like this. Kingfisher seemed to be glad for the chance to talk. But he didn’t really want to say much. Dodd was visiting regularly now; maybe Kingfisher could open up to him. Maybe, for Dodd, he would let the dogs bark. But, as John knew, maybe not.

“Dr. Watson,” said Kingfisher.

“Yes,” John said.

“Has anyone…do you think anyone will ever hear from my daughter?”

He had two daughters, of course; but he only ever talked about one of them.

“No, I’m sorry,” John said. “We haven’t. Maybe one day. I hope so, anyway.”

“I hope so too,” said Kingfisher.

He returned to his contemplation of the window.

John had started a separate blog dedicated to Kingfisher Syndrome. On it, with Kingfisher’s permission, he posted regular updates on his recovery. There were many reasons for that but one of them, certainly, was that if Ryder was out there somewhere and had internet access, it would be very easy for her to follow her father’s progress. So unless she was really off the grid, Ryder would know that, oddly enough, her insane plan had actually worked. Her father was in fact reviving.

“Whatever you did…” John began.

Kingfisher shook his head. “No. Don’t ask me to talk about that.”

“I won’t,” John said. “I just want you to know. Whatever you did. It’s not unforgivable.”

“You don’t know that,” Kingfisher said.

“There is nothing unforgivable, Bertie,” John insisted. “Nothing human beings do that other human beings cannot forgive. I mean it. Everyone thinks that they’re the only one to have done the unforgivable thing but that’s only because we don’t tell each other about it, we just eat the secrets and let them make us sick. It’s—“

John broke off.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I’ve no right to talk to you this way.”

John muttered a goodbye and turned to go.

“Dr. Watson,” said Kingfisher.

John turned. Kingfisher was slowly lowering himself into his wheelchair. His arms were strong enough to do that now.

“Happy birthday.”

The word _happy_ seemed to flutter down to the floor, dissolving into the worn brown carpet.

“Thanks,” John said.

John counted to ten before he began to leave. He didn’t want it to seem like he was in a hurry. Even though he was. He desperately, desperately was.

*          *          *          *

“Good afternoon, Assistant Commissioner,” said the man in the doorway. “I’m Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, sir. I know I’m a few minutes early, but…frankly…I’d rather just…”

The Assistant Commissioner for Homicide and Serious Crimes had seen photos of Detective Lestrade, of course. He rather thought, watching Lestrade hover anxiously by the threshold, that the photos must have aged him. Grizzled as he was, there was a kind of boyishness about him that made him seem younger and more vital in person. Late forties, he should say; prematurely gray. Lestrade had a pair of sharp eyes, even though they were at the moment lowered before the gaze of the alpha male, and the body of a detective who still did his own legwork even though he didn’t have to. So many meetings the assistant commissioner had had with so many of the people who now reported to him, and so few of them had manifested even the smallest spark of personality. But even in the report—as fantastic a document as it was—the older man had detected in this Lestrade a kind of eagerness, almost a _joie de vivre_ which was rare in a detective of Lestrade’s experience. Nobody who meets me now, the commissioner thought, would ever believe that I once was young. Even when I was Lestrade’s age—younger—they called me the Old Man. Distant. Cool. Sharp as glass and just as cutting. Watch and learn, do the work, don’t try to be his friend. No sense of humor, they said. Perhaps they were right. Irony he had a taste for the way other men had a taste for wine. Humor usually left him cold. But the old man _had_ been young once. He still had the spark. It was always a pleasure to see it in someone else.

At his invitation, Lestrade gratefully dropped into the chair opposite the desk. Detective Inspector Lestrade was certainly none too pleased to be in the office of his division head; but there was no sign so far of a guilty conscience.

“Detective,” said the old man. “I’ve been reviewing the documents on the Friar’s Mead case.”

Lestrade swallowed, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Your own report,” said the old man, “I found to be a most interesting document.”

Lestrade brightened for a moment, then darkened again as he processed the irony.

“May I ask if you have ever tried your hand at fiction or poetry?”

Lestrade stared at him in honest confusion which gave way to vague apprehension and then finally to indignation.

“Every word of that report is true, sir. I know it’s weird. If you look up the other cases I’ve worked on with Sherlock Holmes, sir—the files are available again now, I believe—you’ll see that there is quite a high level of weird in all of them. Mind you this one was off the charts. But strange as it is sir, it is as accurate and as comprehensive as I could make it.”

The old man studied him. It was of course possible that this Lestrade was carrying out an elaborate practical joke on the new supervisor. Such things had been known to happen. But if so it was a rather high-risk caper and the rewards, as far as the old man could tell, were negligible. And, as the old man began making up his mind about the gray-haired detective on the other side of the desk, it did not seem as if Greg Lestrade had sufficient imagination to invent a story like this one.

“It begins,” said the old man, “with Ms. Hooper’s discovery of a corpse in her garden, thanks to a dog that had been digging near it. Via the fragments of information gleaned—most irregularly—from the corpse’s feet—“

“Sir, I explain in the report—“

“We will come to Mr. Athelney Jones in a moment, Detective. Your journey takes you up the Thames, ultimately to the Isle of Dogs. There is a death by water. You meet a woman named Marie whose alias is Madame Sosostris. The report is positively infested with women who have long, dark hair, many of them sinister. Despair, isolation, failure, and tragedy are everywhere, with just a glimmer of ambiguous hope as the thunder begins to speak. And finally everyone convenes at the Chapel Perilous, where an attempt is made to revive the Fisher King.”

“Kingfisher, sir, I think you’ll find. Albert Kingfisher.”

It was not a joke. If the old man’s instincts were still working at all, then the man sitting across from him and earnestly correcting what he thought was a misstatement truly had no idea what the old man was driving at.

“Detective,” the old man said slowly, “do you see a pattern here at all? Does this narrative remind you, perhaps, of something you may have read many years ago?”

Lestrade’s brow furrowed in thought.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he finally said, “but I don’t think I take your meaning. There is a pattern. There were quite a few patterns. That’s how we solved it. By examining the patterns. That’s how you always solve a case, sir.”

The old man sat back in his chair, considering.

“I take it you were not an avid reader of literature in your youth, Detective.”

Lestrade broke into a charmingly frank laugh.

“Not me, sir. Very keen on the nonfiction. True crime, history, how to build your own television set, that kind of thing.” Lestrade had a sudden flash of insight. “You’re a poet yourself, aren’t you, sir? I think Toby was telling me that. He bought one of your books.”

He can’t be trying to flatter me, the old man thought. He’s too intelligent to do it so incompetently. Yes, the old man thought. Lestrade _is_ intelligent. Not well-read, not given to startling insight. But clever enough to be bored by routine. Clever enough to need stimulation and to understand that the best way to get it was to work with someone cleverer and bolder and stranger than he was. To realize that the only way not to be brutalized by this job was to make it your mission to do it right.

“What did you make of Lily Kingfisher?” the old man asked.

“Hard to say, sir,” Lestrade said, becoming a little more animated. “The local police, frankly, seem to be scared of her. Of the whole family, really. The land that farm is on is famous. The Fairleighs—Lily Kingfisher’s family—have been on it for generations, first as tenants and now as owners. Used to be one of those big estates, you know, from about 1620 on. The chapel’s all that’s left of the country house. House itself burned down some time in the twenties under mysterious circumstances, and then the family sold off the land and moved out. The women in the Fairleigh family have a reputation for…well, second sight, and things like that. Lily spent a couple decades in the city so the locals are still undecided about her, but down the pub if you stay late enough you do hear some strange stories about Lily’s mother—and even stranger ones about Lily’s grandmother.”

“You’ve been to the local pub,” said the old man.

“Oh, yes, but all in the line of duty. That’s where you get all the local gossip. It’s something I picked up from Sherlock Holmes, sir. But to answer your question, sir,” said Lestrade, divining from the old man’s expression that he was not interested in any more local history, “I didn’t put this in the report because hadn’t yet discovered it. But Gregson’s interviewed Sergeant Dodd, sir, and…well, Gregson thinks they weren’t just chums. Gregson thinks they were…”

The predictable hesitation. As if, just because he was born before the war, the old man hadn’t ever heard of such a thing.

“Were lovers, sir, and that maybe that explains some of Lily’s behavior. I mean the isolation and the hush-hush, she was paid for that—“

“Yes,” said the old man. “I noticed that.”

“But this never taking him to a doctor. Malign neglect, I call that. Getting her own back.”

The old man nodded. “That was my thought too. She did nothing for which she can be prosecuted; but she didn’t wish him well. And so he got worse. Not witchcraft. Just lack of love.”

It was the kind of remark that would have raised the eyebrows of most of his younger subordinates. But Lestrade just nodded. “Lack of love. I think that’s the gist of it, sir. Not a crime, of course. But deadly enough, if it goes on too long.”

The old man looked down at the report. And slowly he was forced to conclude, over the loud protests of his instincts and training, that it was in fact a record of actual events. After all, Madame Sosostris was an alias; and this Marie seemed very cultivated. Perhaps she had deliberately borrowed it from the poem. As for the other connections, the old man knew well enough that if you looked hard enough for any pattern, you would eventually see it.

“I’m curious,” the old man finally said, “as to why you mentioned your encounter with Irene Adler.”

Lestrade looked at him. “Because I thought it was significant, sir.”

The old man smiled.

“It didn’t occur to you,” said the old man, “that you were the only witness to this encounter, and that if you had suppressed it, nobody would ever have known that you had the opportunity to apprehend the prime suspect in the Latimer murder and declined it.”

“I wouldn’t say I _declined_ it, sir.”

“Well, failed to pursue it.”

Lestrade dropped his eyes for a moment.

“Look, sir,” he said, “to be honest, I do feel badly about that. I wish I could have caught her. But I was trying to explain to Donovan, before she stopped speaking to me that is, that I’d have done the same if it had been her in that situation instead of Sherlock. I’d do the same for Gregson, sir, or for you, if the need arose. Take care of your people first last and always. I believe in that. Because there’s no end of criminals, sir. I feel sometimes like I just arrest the same murderer over and over and over again. But people who can fight them, I mean people mad enough to do this job, to _care_ about this job—those people are rare. I took care of Sherlock; I lost a suspect. It’s a pity but I’m at peace with that. I shouldn’t perhaps say it but I am, sir.”

Lestrade looked as if he was. Worried, of course, about the consequences; but not about whether he had done the right thing.

“There are, of course, the many, many procedural violations—“ the old man began.

“Now there I have no regrets,” Lestrade retorted, and then added, “Sir.”

“None?”

Lestrade took a deep breath. “No, sir.”

“Even if it means you’re sacked.”

“Sir,” said Lestrade, “you perhaps haven’t yet met Athelney Jones—“

“I’ve read his report,” said the old man. “I did not find it necessary, after that, to meet him.”

Lestrade, of course, was eager to hear more. But that was all he would get. The news of Jones’s early retirement could not be announced until some questions regarding his pension had been settled.

“So,” said Lestrade sadly, after a long silence. “Is this it then. Am I sacked.”

The old man picked up Lestrade’s report and put it into a desk drawer. He closed it with a clang.

“Detective Inspector,” said the old man, “you are not sacked.”

It took Lestrade a moment to trust what he had just heard. Then his face slowly formed into a smile of what the old man would have sworn was joy.

“Thank you, sir,” Lestrade said, a little huskily. “I’m…I’m very relieved to hear that, sir.”

The old man stood up. “I wish you all the best, Detective,” he said, extending his hand.

Lestrade, rather surprised, clasped his hand and gave it a vigorous shake.

“I’ve interviewed many of your colleagues in the past few weeks,” said the old man. “For one reason or another. And you’re right. People like you are rare.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lestrade said.

“Not at all,” said the old man, withdrawing his hand. “You are dismissed, detective. But I look forward to working with you again. Perhaps on something a trifle less weird. Goodbye, Lestrade.”

Lestrade nodded. “Goodbye, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

He mispronounced it, of course. Everyone did. Dalgliesh didn’t correct him. He let the poor man escape from the office, spared to fight another day. Dalgliesh himself had a division head meeting in ten minutes. He ought to be preparing for it now. But his eyes kept wandering back to the drawer in which he had locked Detective Lestrade’s highly improbable report. A  high level of weird. Of all the things Dalgliesh lost when he had to give up working in the field, the weird was what he missed the most.

*          *          *          *

For five-thirty on a Tuesday evening, the pub was unbelievably crowded. John had to fight through a whole pack of twenty-somethings who had congregated near the door. He’d finally elbowed his way to the bar and, mostly through sign language because of the deafening roar of conversation around them, given him to understand that he would like a pint of Harp. Having gratefully seized it, he turned around, braced for another battle with the backs and shoulders of the youth of London.

“Excuse me,” he said, wearily, to a young blonde woman who was chatting away quite loudly on her mobile.

She looked up at him. She looked about to say something cutting, and then she seemed to actually _see_ him.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Please.”

And she drew back. He could see the others looking at him, having that same moment of recognition, and then drawing together, as if on some kind of signal, to clear an open path for him from the bar to the room beyond.

“Er…” he said, glancing up at the mostly young, largely female faces that seemed to be sort of beaming down at him as he passed. “Thanks.”

He was immeasurably relieved to be able to duck into archway and leave them behind. The big room was still relatively empty; no one at the tables, a few people in the booths, and the platform at the back where the bands played. Molly was kneeling on it, setting up the stand for her keyboard and looking around for an extension cord.

She saw him, and her whole arm burst into a frenzied dance which he supposed was meant to be a friendly wave. This thing with Lestrade had been good for Molly in a lot of ways but did mean that she was excited now pretty much all the time.

“Molly,” John said, nodding at her. “Where is everybody? Don’t you have…sound checks…to do, or something?”

“They’re all late,” Molly said, crawling under the keyboard stand and finally connecting the right plug with the right socket. “Where’s Sherlock?”

“Don’t know,” John said, sipping at his beer. “Said he’d meet me here, he might be late. Didn’t say where was. I guess it will have to be a mystery.”

“Jesus!” That was the clarion call of Lestrade, fighting his way through the bar. He was loaded down with about three tons of equipment, but he ran toward Molly as if it were nothing. “I’m here, I’m here, Molly, sorry I’m late, had a very long very strange conversation with the new division head.”

Molly stood up and clasped her hands together under her chin.

“You’re not sacked,” she said, as she began to bounce up and down on her toes.

“I’m not sacked!” Lestrade cried, dropping everything and extending his arms in triumph.

While Lestrade gathered Molly to his bosom, John pulled out his mobile. Still nothing from Sherlock.

John tried not to care. Sherlock really had been lovely these past weeks. Apart from, well, the things that would never change.

“Ladies!” Harry’s voice was barely audible over the din from the bar. “I’m very sorry to trouble you, but I have a shit-ton of really heavy equipment to move and my back is killing me. Who wants to earn a few butch points?”

Even Molly looked up. Harry marched in with her arms wrapped around a bass drum. And by God, she was trailed by four younger women, all with short hair, hoisting the remaining components of her drum set.

“About time, Harry Watson!” Lestrade shouted, as Harry showed the helpers how to set it up. “Where the hell have _you_ been?”

“Don’t ask.”

Lestrade and Molly looked at each other, all eyebrows raised.

“Look, I’m here now, that’s all that matters.” She assembled the little round portable stool she’d always used at home, and pushed herself behind the drum set, taking her sticks out of a little black bag.

Harry at the drums. John had never thought he’d see _that_ again. He always thought she only did it because their father couldn’t stand it. But evidently she really did enjoy it. Evidently she’d missed it. Lestrade, now loudly tuning up an electric guitar in one corner, certainly seemed at home. Molly was noodling at the keyboard, but really just watching him. It was as if they’d all got a special jolt of electricity when they got up that morning. As if some weird forcefield were forming around them, just because they had instruments in their hands.

“Still don’t have a bass player,” John called out from the booth where he had installed himself.

“No,” Harry said. “We’re not really a band, so much as a trio. But that’s all right. No one will care. Molly, do you have a mike? Oh, you have a mike. And Greg has a mike. No mike for Harry cause Harry can’t sing. So we’re…uh…we’re ready? Everyone?”

“Should we go try to get the people in…” Molly said, with an irresolute look in the direction of the crowded bar. For a moment, her shyness seemed to rush back into her. Her eyes got very large and her mouth got very small.

“Let’s not,” Lestrade said. “Just start. They’ll come in when they hear it. All right, Molly?”

She looked back at Lestrade with that brave little smile. “All right.”

Lestrade grabbed the guitar, settled it against his hips, and counted off.

“Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill…”

At the first chord, the noise from the bar started dying. And Molly was right. They all came in. Not in ones or twos, but in a swarm. The booths filled, the chairs around the tables sprouted, John could barely see the band from where he was sitting. The buzz of conversation started up again, but lower and slower. They were, in fact listening.

And really, John thought, they weren’t half bad. Lestrade’s voice was rough and not always perfectly on pitch, but he could carry a tune and there was a certain raw energy about his playing that was proving infectious. Molly was technically very good, if slightly intense. It made John’s heart twist a little to see Harry rattling away at the snare drum, her hair bouncing as her head bobbed to the rhythm, her foot tapping perilously close to the glass of water she had put on the floor next to her.

A glass of water. Harry. In a pub, in the band, and drinking…water.

It was over. She was clean. She really, truly was.

John tried to wash the lump in his throat down with more beer. Something jostled his elbow, and sent about a half-pint of it flying.

“Sorry!” That came from one of the bright young things from the bar. And she was not apologizing to John, but to Sherlock, who fell into the booth as if something had flung him there. His cheeks were flushed from his battle with the crowd, and his disheveled hair was hanging over his eyes. In one hand he held a long rectangular case by its bakelite handle.

“Where have you been?” John said. “And what’s that?”

Sherlock glanced at the case. He set it down on the floor, pushed it under the table with one foot, and then lunged at John.

The sight of Sherlock moving in like an oncoming train set off a brief flicker of panic. Then their lips met, and their mouths opened, and John was clinging to Sherlock like a drowning man, and thinking of absolutely nothing except for how badly he wanted to resume normal activities right there and then.

“You said you would let me disappear,” Sherlock whispered in his ear.

John nodded.

“Disappear with me.”

Sherlock melted into the crowd. John waited for the song to finish, figuring that was a decent interval, and then got up from the table.

As he made his way through the room—curiously, the crowds seemed again to be making way for him—his mind finally started to register the music.

“You can hide neath the covers and study your pain...Make crosses from your lovers; throw roses in the rain...Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets…”

John turned around to watch them.

It was just Lestrade, with Molly on the piano. He wasn’t wearing the guitar. He was at the standing microphone, singing into it, his eyes almost closed. Molly’s fingers traveled over the keyboard with confidence and precision, but her eyes were on Lestrade, big and shining and full of pride and love.

“Well, I’m no hero, that’s understood...all the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood…”

Harry, who had nothing to do, was sipping at her glass of water. She looked out and saw him.

Harry solemnly raised her glass of water to him. John swallowed, and nodded. And when he knew it wouldn’t look like panic, he turned and walked into the bar, and all the way back to the gents.

John pushed the door open. Sherlock’s right hand shot out of one of the stalls, seized him, and dragged him in.

The stall door slammed shut. John reached behind him with one hand and shot the bolt. Their bodies kept bumping up against the walls and the door as they tore at each other’s clothes. Anyone who walked into the loo right now would know exactly what was going on. John didn’t care. Neither, obviously, did Sherlock. All those weeks of being so careful not to put the affected muscles under stress and Sherlock had never, until right now, given John any indication of just how desperately starved he was.

“I cannot believe,” Sherlock breathed, “that we ever did without this. What was the _matter_ with us, John? What were we _thinking_?”

Sherlock turned around to brace himself against the stall door. God he was beautiful, everywhere and always, but especially now, the long white curve of his back and his narrow hips and the short dark hairs at the nape of his neck, the ones John had grabbed so hard the day Sherlock came back from the dead. They were dewed with sweat now, tightly curled against his white skin. Oh, the details, those precious tiny things that could burst your heart, the blinding light that revealed them to you in that breathless moment before it all began.

*          *          *

By the time John and Sherlock made their only slightly disheveled way back to the big room, their booth had been occupied. But, on a second look, it turned out to be occupied by Harry, Molly, and Lestrade. Evidently they had finished their first set and were taking a break.

“You sound great,” John said, as he and Sherlock slid rather sheepishly into the booth.

“Please, John,” Sherlock said. “Accuracy in all things. They do not sound great. They sound…”

Harry, Lestrade, and Molly all fixed Sherlock with an anticipatory stare which seemed to unnerve him. He scratched his head and tried to pretend he hadn’t started the sentence.

“All right, Sherlock,” Harry said. “The phrase you are searching for is ‘all right.’”

“I was going to say ‘adequate,’” Sherlock replied.

“Brilliant,” Lestrade shouted. “We’ll put that on the poster. ‘Their sound is…adequate.’ Sherlock Holmes.”

John started laughing. Not because it was that funny, but because he was happy. They were all still alive. They were all—more or less—whole. They were all here, around the table, all the people he loved. None of them, for the moment, lost.

“Here, Molly,” Harry said, waving her mobile. “Here’s a good picture of you doing ‘Tin Angel.’”

John leaned over. It was Molly, on a stool, singing with her mouth wide open, looking so comfortable in her own skin that for a moment John wasn’t sure it was really her.

“Aw,” Lestrade said. “That _is_ a good picture. Will you send it to us, Harry?”

Harry tapped the screen. The mobile let out a gasp.

Yes. A gasp. A breathy little feminine gasp, starting high and sliding gently lower. A gasp that John recognized immediately, because he had heard it so many goddamn times coming from Sherlock’s phone.

“Harry,” Lestrade said, “your phone is enjoying this just a little too much.”

Harry turned beet red and shoved the phone as deep into her pocket as it would go.

“Why is Irene Adler texting you,” Sherlock said, rather sharply, “and when did she gain access to your mobile phone?”

Harry glanced at Lestrade.

“Look, boys, can we let it go?” Harry said. “I don’t know how she did this to my phone and I don’t know why she’s texting me. I don’t know what the fuck I ever was to her. I don’t know why she thinks this is funny.”

“It’s all right, Harry,” John said, because she seemed to be genuinely upset. “Just turn the sound off for now, Sherlock will find a way to fix it for you.”

From Harry’s pocket came another little electronic moan. Harry pulled the phone out and silenced it viciously.

“Poor Harry,” Molly said. “I think it’s a very mean trick to play on you.”

“Thank you Molly,” Harry said, returning the mobile to her pocket. “You’re right. It's very immature.”

They watched Harry put her hands on the table and fold them, nonchalantly.

“And besides,” Harry said. “That’s not even what she sounds like.”

Within the noisy world of the bar, there emerged a tiny pocket of electrified silence as John, Sherlock, Molly, and Lestrade all stared at Harry aghast.

Harry looked up from the table. She burst out laughing.

“Jesus,” she said. “You lot will believe _anything."_  

“You bastard,” John shouted, feeling nearly faint with relief.

“I had you,” Harry shouted, triumphantly. “I had you all. Every last damn one of you. Oh my God, I’m going to retire _now_. I will _never_ top that one.” She stood up from the table. “Come on, back to business. Let’s go.”

Harry slid out of the booth. Lestrade and Molly followed. John waited till they were busy setting up, then looked at Sherlock.

“Did she really—“

“The evidence is inconclusive,” Sherlock replied immediately. He had obviously been doing that thing that he did as soon as he first heard the familiar sound. “Harry’s changed her clothes since, but she definitely had some kind of contact with Irene Adler earlier today. She did not, of course, wish to mention this fact in front of Lestrade and Molly; but there’s no room for doubt. Irene’s perfume is quite distinctive and she applies it to her wrists, which makes the fact that traces of the scent still cling to Harry’s hair highly suggestive. But there’s no way to know how far it went and frankly, John, I say this rarely, but some mysteries are better left unsolved.”

“You may be right,” John said, watching Harry resume her seat behind the drums, and suppressing a shiver.

 “Ladies and gentlemen,” Lestrade was saying to the assembled crowd, which had swollen to an even larger size. “Thank you so much for coming out tonight. You’ve been a wonderful audience, and we’re so glad to have so many of you with us here to celebrate the birthday of our very own Dr. John Watson!”

A wave of applause and cheering thundered from the assembled crowd. John blinked. He shook his head. He tried to take it in.

“Here to celebrate…” he said, bewildered.

Sherlock leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Your powers of incomprehension amaze me, John. Did you really not notice?”

“Notice what?”

“That girl over there in the long black coat,” Sherlock murmured, pointing her out. “She’s wearing a button with your face on it.”

“I…good Lord. So she is.”

“You see the girl she’s talking to, across the table from her,” Sherlock went on, while Lestrade kept rambling. “She’s got a W.W. drawn on the back of her hand in black marker. Stands for ‘Watson’s Warriors.’”

“Stands for _what_?” John whispered.

“You have fans, John,” Sherlock murmured. “These are them. Well. These are as many as could squeeze into this dive. Each of them, in return for a small donation to the Kingfisher Syndrome Research Group, has been issued an e-ticket admitting them to this bar. They’re not here for the feeble musical stylings of Detective Inspector Lestrade and his trio. They’re here because you’re here. They’re here for your birthday party, John.”

John looked back out into the sea of faces.

“All of them?” he said, in a small and rather frightened voice.

There was no answer. Sherlock had disappeared.

Well, John had said he would allow it.

“We’re going to do a song now that our keyboardist Molly introduced us to,” Lestrade called out. “Turns out to be a favorite of John’s although Sherlock says he’d rather die than admit it. So naturally we’re going to make him listen to it in public.”

Laughter. John started trying to think about embarrassing songs Sherlock might have caught him listening to. He certainly hoped it wasn’t going to be “Blurred Lines.”

“It’s a little…I don’t know…light for us, you understand,” Lestrade said. “But we’ve embraced it, haven’t we, Harry? Haven’t we embraced it?”

Harry waved a pair of drumsticks at him. “It’s got a beat, Greg, that’s all I care about.”

“Anyway. So we would like to dedicate this song, to John, on his birthday. All right, let me just unplug here…this Philip Philips bloke is very _sensitive_ , you understand, it requires the acoustic touch…”

The name sparked a little flurry of excitement in the crowd. John himself felt a twinge of anxiety. There were only two Philip Philips songs that anyone had ever heard, and only one that John had downloaded. And which John often listened to on his iPod when he thought nobody would notice. And which John was curiously unable to listen to without tearing up.

“Right then,” Lestrade said. “Away we go. Where’s the birthday boy? There he is. Take a bow, Dr. Watson!”

The best John could manage was to raise his glass to the crowd. They cheered right back at him, rather deafeningly.

“So this is from all of us,” Lestrade said to him. “For you, John. Happy birthday.”

Lestrade got the guitar settled and began jangling away at the introduction.

Yes. That was it. [That was the hook.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozQ4yV__Vw&list=PLhYk12c2AbejvEBEZ8AqV0oqvVbnPtvrQ) Oh Lord.

Lestrade leaned over the mike and began singing in his raspy, but not unpleasant tenor.

“When life leaves you high and dry I’ll be at your door tonight  
If you need help,  
If you need help.”

John took a breath. His throat was already tight.

Molly’s voice joined in.

“I’ll shut down the city lights, I’ll lie, cheat, I'll beg and bribe  
To make you well,  
To make you well.”

Even Harry was singing now. Fortunately nobody could hear her, since she had no mike; but she was giving it her all anyway.

“When enemies are at your door I’ll carry you away from war,  
If you need help,  
If you need help.”

Some of the women in the crowd were singing along, tentatively.

“Your hope dangling by a string I’ll share in your suffering,  
To make you well,  
To make you well.”

Lestrade glanced over at John as he raised his voice over the others.

“Give me reasons to believe  
That you would do the same for me…”

There was a pause, while the crowd hung suspended. Then Harry hit the snare, and Lestrade tore into the chorus.

“And I will do it for you, for you…baby, I’m not moving on, I’ll love you long after you’re gone…”

The whole picked up the refrain.

“For you-ou, for you-ou…  
You will never sleep alone, I’ll love you long after you’re gone,  
Yeah long after you’re gone gone gone.”

John blinked. That was when he noticed his eyelids were wet. Oh for fuck’s sake. It was just a song. Just a song about love. Just a promise, from his friends, from his family, from that crowd of total strangers in the bar, that he was not alone. That even when Sherlock wasn’t there—even if, say, Sherlock had fled the scene because popular music acted on him like pepper spray—there would always be someone who had John’s back. That as broken as he had been, there were enough people in the world to wish him well.

John finished off his beer, hoping nobody would see the tears that insisted on coming.

Lestrade took another breath and attacked the next verse.

“When you fall like a statue I'm gonna be there to catch you…”

John closed his eyes. Bad move. It only made him see the image that much clearer. Why was it that no matter how many times he told himself that it was really Moriarty’s body, it still _felt_ as if it was Sherlock’s?

He forced his eyes open. He wished Sherlock had not chosen this moment to disappear.

“…tell me what you need,” Lestrade was singing, with Molly’s voice behind him. “What do you need?”

Wait.

John turned his attention to the rear of the stage, where someone seemed to be crouched down and opening a rectangular case. 

“I surrender, honestly,” Lestrade sang. “You’ve always done the same for me. So I will do it for you...” 

But nobody was paying any attention to Lestrade. Someone in the crowd had noticed that there was now a fourth person striding onto the stage. And this person was tall and narrow, with dark hair half-screening a pair of piercing blue eyes. And he was carrying a violin. And you could hear the gasps as they recognized him.

They couldn’t be half as astonished as John was. Sherlock never played in public. Not since he was a very little boy. Asked why, Sherlock had just looked at him and snapped, “Because I’m not a trained monkey.” That was long ago, of course. Before.

The crowd had recovered its voice and was belting out the last of the chorus.

“Fo-or you-ou, fo-or you-ou…you will never sleep alone, I’ll love you long after you’re gone…”

Sherlock lifted the violin and stepped up to the mike.

They had reached the bridge. John knew the words. _You’re my backbone, you’re my cornerstone, you’re my crutch when my legs stop moving…_ But nobody sang them, except for the violin.

John watched Sherlock pull the notes out of his violin. He was riveted as always by Sherlock’s hands, by his eyes, by his complete absorption in the music he was making, by the almost occult sympathy between Sherlock’s body and the instrument. Sherlock took up the tune, caressed it, complicated it, drew the bow faster and faster across the vibrating cords until the music became a living thing, ardent and throbbing and no longer this exact song but still maddeningly familiar and really that violin was almost speaking... 

The hospital. That’s where John was remembering this music from. The music to which John’s heartstrings were vibrating now was related, somehow, to all that improvising in the hospital. Which had all sounded familiar to John because it was based on this section of this song. Because Sherlock had been practicing.

For six weeks. He had been practicing, for six weeks, for this.

That trio had always been a quartet.

Sherlock glanced over at John. He saw the penny drop, as he always did. He drew the bow across the strings again, with that wicked smile. Don’t get too comfortable, he seemed to be saying. When I want to surprise you, you’ll never see it coming.

John called out, thought he knew Sherlock wouldn’t hear him, “You miserable fucker.”

With a laugh, Sherlock launched into a cadenza.

Everything stopped. The talking, everything. They were silent, listening to that stupid little tune open out like a fan, layer upon layer, Sherlock’s fingers climbing faster and faster up the neck of the violin, till it came crashing down to earth in a series of quick, slashing chords that left everyone breathless.

The room erupted. For a long time all you could hear was the clapping and cheering, banging on tables and stamping of feet. Harry was pounding the bass drum but it was just a vibration. Sherlock seemed, at first, to be actually stunned. Then he recovered, bowed very slightly, and retreated speedily to the back of the stage.

The drumbeat emerged as the crowd noise died away. And slowly, Lestrade’s voice became audible.

“You’re my head start, you’re my rugged heart,

You’re the pulse that I’ve always needed…”

Sherlock lifted the violin again. He was just the string section now, blending in with everything else, the guitar and the piano and the insistent throb of the bass drum.

“Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating…”

Harry kept on stomping the pedal, harder and harder, as the crowd took it up.

“Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating,

Like a drum, my heart never stops beating for you-ou…for you-ou…”

They were going to blow the roof off the pub. It was too much for one room. All those voices, the ones he knew and the one’s he didn’t, the drum pounding as if it too was his heart, Sherlock up there with the rest of them, saying in public--in the way that meant most to Sherlock--all the things he had said to John in private during those long weeks of recovery. _I’m not moving on…I’ll love you long after you’re gone…_

If this were our wedding, John thought, it couldn’t be better. I couldn’t be prouder, or happier, or any more in awe.

The thought made his heart expand so fast he couldn’t breathe for a moment. The others went right on breathing for him. There was the bass drum again, pounding away. _Like a drum, baby, don’t stop beating._ Lestrade was conducting the crowd. Molly was looking down at the keyboard; this sudden decision to keep repeating that one line had spooked her, but she was handling it. Sherlock had locked eyes with Lestrade, waiting for the signal to move on.

Lestrade nodded. Harry hit the snare sharply, and they broke into another chorus. 

“For you, for you…baby, I’m not moving on, I’ll love you long after you’re gone…”

John looked at them all now, trying to seize all the details, trying to write them on his heart. Lestrade belting for all he was worth into the microphone while his hands strummed frantically at that second-hand six-string. Molly starting to like this unscripted detour, starting to feel the music instead of seeing the notes in her head. Harry banging on everything she could reach, looking happier than he had ever seen her. And Sherlock, moving slowly up to the front of the stage, launching into another variation. The violin soaring over everything else, high and taut and very strange, but still part of the song that the whole world was singing.

“Thank you so much, everybody!” Lestrade shouted, as the chorus kept rolling. “I’m Greg Lestrade, and we are the Baker Street Irregulars! One, two, three, four…”

The chorus again, for the last time. How beautiful it would be, John thought, if it could always be like this. Everyone in tune, everyone happy, everyone sending into the air whatever love they had to offer, hoping it would find someone who needed it. But it can’t always. He had read it in a book somewhere as a child: there are no stars without darkness. You reach a moment like this through a long dark night of struggle, that’s just the way it has to be. But it’s worth it. It’s worth what you have to do to reach this moment.  

“Long after you’re gone, gone, gone.”

The voices dropped out. The drums stopped. Lestrade played his last bars. They all left it to Sherlock to hold the last note, to draw the bow along the string so slowly you could hardly bear it. And then, as his eyes found John’s, to drop the bow. And to launch them all into that moment in which John wished now he could live forever. That moment of silence between the dying vibrations of the final note and the thunderburst of applause, when it was all just about to begin.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's what happened.
> 
> "Empty Houses" sets up a sequel based on "The Blue Carbuncle." Everyone loves "Blue Carbuncle." It's one of the happiest stories in the canon. Nobody dies, it's Christmas, and Holmes decides to let James Ryder go. It's always been important to me that Ryder is not a sympathetic character and there are no mitigating circumstances. Holmes pardons Ryder not because he deserves it, but because Holmes can see how weak Ryder is and he's thinking about what prison will do to him. It's an act of mercy. 
> 
> As the basis for a casefic, though, "Blue Carbuncle" has some drawbacks. The thin plot depends a lot on coincidence. Holmes does more legwork than brainwork; the best piece of deduction is his analysis of Henry Baker's hat, which turns out to be completely irrelevant to the case. So to support the amount of plot to which I am addicted, it was going to need some reinforcement from somewhere else.
> 
> And that was when it occurred to me that the only other text I'm familiar with that uses the word "carbuncle" is T. S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_. In "The Fire Sermon" there's a meaningless sexual encounter between a typist and a bank clerk who is described as "the young man carbuncular." (In this context, it means he's got acne.) I thought, fine, I'll cross "Blue Carbuncle" with _The Waste Land_. 
> 
> So this is a Blue Carbuncle/Waste Land crossover or fusion or I don't know exactly what to call it, but the plot, some of the characterization, and some of the themes are inspired by _The Waste Land_. 
> 
> Marie's character, for instance, combines two 'characters' from TWL. One is a speaker from the first section of TWL ("Burial of the Dead"). The other is Madame Sosostris, also introduced in "The Burial of the Dead" as a "clairvoyante" who does a tarot reading for the narrator. I was thinking, OK, how do I get her into this story...wait a minute...her name's Sosostris and she reads tarot. SHE'S A GREEK INTERPRETER!
> 
> So that's how this story got built: finding connections and making them part of the plot. Bringing in GREEK meant, of course, bringing in Kemp and Latimer and Mycroft. I eliminated the brother and made Sophia both the girl that Latimer seduces and the victim that Kemp torments. In GREEK it's strongly implied that Sophia murders both of them later in revenge; well, Sophia can't, but Ryder gets one of them. 
> 
> There are two other ACD stories in here. "Three Garridebs," of course, everyone knows. That's another story with a terrible plot (it's a retread of an idea Doyle has already used in "Redheaded League"), but you can't give it up because of that one paragraph that starts with "It was worth a wound". I thought it made a good counterpart to the angst John goes through over Sherlock's death in "Empty Houses" and the shooting also produces the chaos and disintegration that you get at the very end of TWL when the whole poem just seems to come apart into babel and gibberish. The last line of TWL is "Shantih, shantih, shantih," however, which Eliot glosses as "the peace that passeth understanding." So the last chapter proper of YMC ends with that moment of reunion in the hospital.
> 
> Fewer people remember "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier." It's a very late story; and it's bad. But it's about a soldier who came back from the Boer War with what his family thinks is leprosy. His family hides him away and stonewalls his old Army buddy Dodd, who asks Holmes to find out what's happened to him. That story gave me a way of working in the story of the Fisher King, which--if you believe some critics--is one of the myths that gives _The Waste Land_ its "plot."
> 
> I couldn't keep the TWL elements aligned with the "right" chapters. For instance, Marie should really appear in Chapter 1, but she doesn't show up until Chapter 5. The description of Irene enthroned is based on the opening of "A Game of Chess," but she doesn't appear until Chapter 3. But I did try to set it up so that the beginning and end of each chapter has some connection to the beginning and end of the corresponding section of _The Waste Land_.
> 
> TWL is famous for constantly referring to other texts. YMC makes a lot of references to other fandoms. It gets most obvious in the epilogue, where Lestrade's new boss is P. D. James's detective-poet Adam Dalgliesh, and John's doctor doesn't have a name.
> 
> The title of the epilogue is also kind of an Eliot joke. Apart from TWL his other major long poem is _Four Quartets_.
> 
> There's more going on but I'm running out of space. If you reread TWL again and go back and look at YMC you will probably see connections you didn't see before. If you've never read TWL, well, never mind; I did my best to make sure the story could stand on its own. Thanks for reading!


End file.
